"The trouble with music appreciation in general is that people are taught to have too much respect for music; they should be taught to love it instead." - Igor Stravinsky (New York Times Magazine, 9/27/1964)
As a simple consumer of (mostly) classical music, I would not be rushing to hear these concerts. However, my ears have been opened so many times over the years, that I’m glad that composers are still expressing in new ways. If I listen to these pieces, it will be when I’m streaming music into my home and feeling adventurous. Regardless, I give full credit to the musicians that can give these composers the voice to make a statement.
Ravel was critized both for being too experimental and too old fashioned. Since he has found his way into the Canon it was perhaps simply just timeless. I also suggest looking up videos of his house. He was an interesting man who certainly embodied this advice.
100% agree. Of course there is some intellect involved to get good music written, it is like other professions also a craft, especially when writing for orchestra. But my full conviction is that listening to music should be an enjoyable experience, which can of course range from relaxing, calming, activating to bringing sad and happy feelings in resonance.
Excellent. And the quoting too. One Gershwin asked Ravel to teach composition or orchestration, or so. Ravel rejected. Continue to do your thing and do not try to become like me. Ravel did not think of himself to be really good and his now famous Bolero was a "practice piece for orchestra without music to be conducted by an iron conductor."
It does matter a little bit how you interpret 'dying'. The video makes a very good case for it not dying in the sense that there is a tonne of innovation still happening, there are a tonne of talented composers producing interesting new music, and maybe more people would be able to enjoy it if they learned to listen to it differently, because it does require a different sort of appreciation that lots of earlier classical music, and even more so vs modern non-classical music. And videos like these are amazing for helping the uneducated like me enjoy this music so thank you so much for making them. 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.
Normally I avoid these kinds of posts about classical music (or many others) dying. If they don't get any oxygen the fire burns out. However Nahre's posts are erudite and so well communicated so I took a chance. So. Glad. I did, This is a spot on discussion and guide on exploring any music that's new to a listener. Bravo Nahre!
I think it's something more along the lines of: "Any music that is supposed to be 'performed'" (whatever 'performed' may really mean). Most pop is mostly meant to be listened to on audio systems, while here it seems the music is meant to be performed in front of an audience.
Classical music has been experimental for too long now. All the effort is in constantly creating new languages, to the point that we have forgotten that what matters most is not the language but the message. With many of the current composers I'm not sure there is even a message that is communicated anymore, other than "hey, listen to this, I have created yet another new language! Impressive, isn't it?"
Looks like post-modernism in music. Everybody has their own opinions, their own questions but no idea how to answer them or sort them out as good or bad.
Well “what matters most” is entirely subjective and there are many composers who don’t write in highly experimental musical languages. When you don’t understand a piece of music, the benefit of the composers being alive is that you can ask them questions, start a dialogue, and be curious about why they chose to compose the piece the way they did.
I can listen to Chopin pieces 100 times and still want to and appreciate the 101st time. Contemporary classical music is interesting to listen to perhaps once or twice at most. Some are so painful to my ears I can hardly make it through the first time; or rather I’ll sit through it once just for the novelty of the experience perhaps.
Agreed. Whenever I’m at the symphony and they are trying a new modern piece I simply have to sit and bear through the treachery before I can listen to well… the actual music.
Try Thomas Ades and Hans Abrahamsen. They are very consonant. I can listen to them all day. I can also listen to Unsuk Chin on repeat but her music is too high pitched for some.
@@Uhor There are some modern composers out there who compose in older styles. I played one piece like that recently (Adagio for recorder quartet, by Matthias Maute), and it was really good. Because the composer wasn't trying to be avant garde - I think they simply wanted to make something beautiful, and they succeeded. I got the melody stuck in my head from practicing the soprano part. I wish we could have more of that, and less in the way of glorified noise with composers insisting that no one understands their brilliance. The greatness of music is not inversely proportional to the number of people who listen to and enjoy it.
I think modern classical music is a lot like free jazz. Firstly, it teaches you to enjoy letting go of expectations. If you are waiting for the chorus or the hook, you will be disappointed. However, if you just sit in the present and allow the ocean of music to take you, you will learn to enjoy the ride! If you fight it, you will be frustrated. Secondly, it teaches you to find music everywhere!
This is an INCREDIBLE video. I am sad I couldn't be there at Elbphilharmonie this year but was delighted to see this video pop up on my screen with so many of my favorite musicians featured! You are doing so much justice to a community that, though it may not truly be the case, often feels as though it IS a futility or a dying project that we invest our lives into. I hope that as a result of this video that all who enjoy music, both musicians and non-musicians, have a greater sense of openness to the openness of contemporary music.
Its only natural that it doesnt attract a lot of people. The average person likes to have a balance between familiarity and novelty, and this music really focusses on novelty. Its not music thats made to be played in the background at the store, or to sing along to, or to dance to, so you already lose a lot of people there. I do think its interesting, but its very nature doesnt make it something for everyone. edit: to be clear, i find this music "interesting" at most. I would never buy tickets for a concert like this, but if i accidentally stumbled across it i would give it a chance. the only thing it really has going for me is novelty, which can be inspiring if you want to write music yourself; it might give you ideas on how you could apply these crazy ideas in music that also appeals to a wider audience. Once that novelty wears off (which will be after a couple of listens at most) i'd have no real reason to listen to this music.
It is for a very very small audience, I am quite confident that it is much less than 1% of people listening regularly to such music. Why should I listen to such, when I can spend my time enjoying the most beautiful pieces from Chopin or some Vivaldi baroque arias etc. which deeply touch me, while most of the contemporary music just goes on my nerves? There are exceptions of course.
@@gstlb Indeed! Hence, there's no need for all this contemporary bullshit that pretends to be "music". 😂 Reminds me of the worst of the worst of what anyone can see in museums for contemporary art. 🤣
Well it depends. Old classical work still is high and kicking. Especially because dancing to them (Waltz, Quick Step, etc) still is popular (atleast in my experience, but then again Germany has a big history with classical music) This new classic music (abusing any and every instrument in the orchestra in the some interpretations) is probably turning into a small, very special group
In 1970 - high school theory class - we were exposed to 12 tone and other forms of modern classical music. We were assured that because the Rite of Spring was not welcomed at the time, everything we hear now, like John Cage abusing a piano, will sound like the Rite of Spring to people in the future. That’s a logical fallacy I learned to remember, after spending way too much time trying to like “difficult” music. I still fall into the trap of writing “clever” themes in 7/8, that nobody likes. For me, music that connects is better than music that doesn’t. Stravinsky said we still have some beautiful music to discover in the key of C major. Just as good classic rock music has moved to Nashville, I think the classical composers worth listening to - for me - have gone to the movies, and perhaps the video games.
Same with me, I spent too much time to try to understand this music, now I do not care, I only listen to what delights me. But there is a certain aspect of training, to sensitize your ear, to follow what is happening in the music which also can be delightful. Sometimes I am so moved of how beautifully things are "crafted" when I have a look at them, it makes it even more pleasurable to listen to these. I nearly exclusively listen to tonal music.
In defense of 7/8, that's the time signature of "Money" and it made it on the Billboard 100 in '72, so people must of liked it then. I never even noticed it was in 7/8 until I overheard an interview with Roger Waters and he pointed it out.
I love your comment so much. Yes, there's still beauty to find in C major, in 4/4, in classical music. And I really like composers like John Williams, Koji Kondo, Joe Hisaishi, they understand music is meant to be beautiful.
A few thoughts: I think it is rather harsh and disingenuous to describe what John Cage did as 'abuse'. And in fact, I would say that in the contemporary world of music, Cage's preludes and etudes are seen with a similar eye to Stravinsky's Rite of Spring 50 years after its premiere; perhaps without the same level of popularity, but certainly with a similar distance or appreciation within and through history. While I don't believe that writing themes in 7/8 is "clever" considering its novelty is several centuries old now and has been demonstrated with incredible conviction and quality by countless composers, I do believe that attempting to write things that are "clever", or more specifically to be seen AS clever, is a path that will always lead to the unmusical. Listeners can always sniff an inauthentic piece - hence why Boulez's Répons is listened to with the highest regard and appreciation while certain Ferneyhough works are not - though not to discredit his work as an artist, some of which is my favorite. The quote regarding the "key of C major" was by Arnold Schoenberg, not Stravinsky.
@@d3l_nev beautiful? perhaps 'pretty' is the word you are looking for. All composers seek beauty, but not all seek prettiness. So many of the composers you may list as your favorite, such as Mozart, Beethoven, or Mahler, has plenty of music that did not seek to be pretty and yet are incredibly beautiful and have stood the test of time (take Mozart's dissonance quartet, Beethoven's Hammerklavier, or Mahler's 8 final movement)
Dunno. To me 99.9% avant-garde/whatever sounds like a bunch of people trying real hard to avoid criticism. Like they're trying to create a Safe Space in which any criticism of their work can be dismissed by saying "Oh, you just don't understand this brand new genre I've literally just created right now." And it's like, OK. Sure. With regards to "breaking rules," composers like Beethoven "broke" rules. But they did it by building on top of previous work. Like an athlete breaking a record. Running/jumping/etc. faster than it seemed humanly possible. Or like a rocket scientist making a rocket able to not only fly but now also land. THAT is "moving things forward" to me. Whereas this sound-design-with-classical-instruments-identifying-itself-as-music thing, on the other hand... I don't see how it's innovating anything. I KNOW how a piano is going to sound if you stab it with a chainsaw in a helicopter. It's neither surprising nor expanding my mind. It's just wasting my time.
This is correct. This is not music, it’s child’s play being lifted up as something amazing. No wonder people flock to songs that have literally 3 chords. You either have something extremely boring but your able to listen to it or you have people trying hard to compensate for a lack of writing skill creating “music” that sounds like a broken chainsaw.
Thanks for this diplomatic video. I often find new music challenging as a composer, since my sensibilities tend towards broadly tonal music, and I’ve found it difficult to fit in with new music scenes because of this.
The thing is, in almost every art form there is a notion of fluctuation between tension and stability, because it’s the essence of storytelling that our human emotions relate to. It’s hard to enjoy art that only has tension and never any release.
While I understand (and share, at some point), I think it’s necessary to point out two things. First, tension and release can be found in contemporary atonal music. Not only it has to with harmony (as in tonal music) there are other parameters (like dynamics, rhythm, timbre and texture) that can be managed in a way that creates tension and release). But I have to admit that the harmonic tension and release is so strong and important. The second thing I wanted to say is that there are plenty of examples of traditional music without harmonic tension/release. I’m thinking of Javanese gamelan music or Babongo music.
@@jorge.iglesias I do think though that in modern western classical music the lack of harmony and melody is particularly catastrophical because they are so instrumental to the tradition of that type of music. And also a certain way to handle tension and release in that harmonic and melodic sense is a fundamental trait of western classical music.
And an overall musically meaningful structure, starting from the very musical intervals.. If they discard all, and all that remains is the artificial 12 tone equal temperament plus a few INTELLECTUAL (not "musical") rules, then it is very difficult to get something that is "music".
@jorge.iglesias has a very good point but to create tension and release one needs expectation which means you need references too build up these expectations wether they are deceived or fulfilled. Therefore the (seemingly) total absence of rules or knowledge of the underlying rules makes it impossible or very discouraging to follow and appreciate anything. Still trying to keep an open mind though :)
What's missing from all this is that music is a form of communication. It's a conversation. And to have a conversation with someone, you have to be speaking the same language. If each of these composer's goals is to create their own new, idiosyncratic language, then WHO exactly are they conversing with? What's the point of it all? At least works like 4'33 serve (or once served) as a kind of intelligible commentary. Cage was radical but at the end of the day, he was still conversing with his audience.
I started listening to a contemporary piece but stopped after a couple of minutes. Then I listened to an interview with the composer about the piece and what he was wanting to say. I then went back and listened to the whole piece with a new appreciation.
IMO this means the piece utterly failed. Any and all art is dependent on context, of course - but that's the broad context of the world you live in, not the artificial context of the artist. If the piece depends so heavily on the artist providing the specific context to bridge the gap between the broader life-context and the special requisite knowledge to appreciate the composition, then perhaps the interview should've been included as a prelude to the piece. :P
@@Ithirahad It does not mean that the piece failed. We all have to develop into these new styles and we mostly are not prepared. No-one is born to understand the often tricky and difficult music of contemporary composers. It only means, the listener has developed.
"Music should humbly seek to please; within these limits great beauty may perhaps be found. Extreme complication is contrary to art. Beauty must appeal to the senses, must provide us with immediate enjoyment, must impress us or insinuate itself into us without any effort on our part." - Debussy
What I find most interesting in this space is the divergence between works for solo instruments and larger ensembles. Generally speaking I'm going to at least appreciate if not actually like any work for solo instrument because they tend to keep the elements of rhythm and melody intact. When we get into larger ensembles there is a lot of experimentation purely in harmony and color which may not always work. At least that's how I see it. I think they are two very different directions sometimes.
That's what I feel about some Ferneyhough, Stockhausen or even Carter orchestral compositions. They feel like studies in noise and texture, pretty much a mess, while the chamber or piano pieces seems to follow a more dramatic, narrative approach.
Thank you for providing this insight. I understand the feeling that you allude to in the title. It's easy to have that feeling if we don't know one basic truth: we cannot observe the creation of classical music. In that moment, it is called contemporary music. The same applies to social events we experience - they will only be considered historical by future generations. The music we produce and consume today can only be considered 'classical' in the future, once it has been analyzed and contextualized as part of the historical development of music. At present, it is simply contemporary music that is part of the ongoing development of the art form. Essentially, it is created by experimenting with new sounds, and you can enjoy it only if you are part of the experiment or understand it!
I’m finding it difficult to connect to a lot of modern concert music. When I studied in the late 80s, we were still expected to produce material from the Boulezian ideology. It seemed like that academic style was eschewed for a return to tonal music in the late 90s but it appears that we’ve circled back to this quasi intellectualized concept art. The funny thing is that most new compositions I’ve heard that exploit this aren’t breaking any ground that Xenakis, Ligeti, Crumb, even as far back as Varese hadn’t already ventured into 60-80 years ago. I do however enjoy Unsuk Chin’s work. Then again, she studied under Ligeti so maybe there is something to that…
I’d very much agree with a lot of what you say - most notably your admiration of Chin! However, I would contest this sentiment with so much of the music of my colleagues and friends who follow their inspiration from Boulez, Xenakis, Scelsi, Crumb, etc. who have created music that is truly revolutionary and leaps and bounds forward than their influences’ works (which is hard to even fathom!) I would strongly recommend listening to the works of Yann Robin and Raphael Cendo as sources for these motions.
@@7James77 I don’t think it’s possible that they could be forgotten. They are truly a part of the canon - studied and revered by many - and every major city are performing one of these composers every night. You must not get out much
"The new kind of music seems to create not from the heart but from the head. Its composers think rather than feel. They have not the capacity to make their works exalt - they meditate, protest, analyze, reason, calculate and brood, but they do not exalt." - Sergei Rachmaninoff
Silly quote by Rachmaninoff here (a guy who shifted from composition to a career of a concert pianist btw). Composers always think about their music. Constantly. There are over 5 thousand pages of sketches that Beethoven left us. That is because he was always working and re-working ideas, and it is his thought process that allowed him to create his masterpieces. Brahms said that there is no creating without hard work, and that you need to come back to your music and rewrite it over and over again until is it a complete work of art. Making music purely through instinct or emotion is improvisation, not composition.
@@dylanmcdermott1110 it will be returned to for its staying quality, quite unlike the horrid noises in this video, the smarter sapien likes patterns, a deaf composer knew this well.
There's the rub. A working definition of something passing out of cultural relevancy is the point at which you see legitimate discussion around whether it's dead or not. Everything else is really just debating the precise semantics of "dead".
Thank you for this short exploration of new music. It’s thought provoking, but I still wonder what is being accomplished in these new forms. Traditional tonal music was, and remains, popular. The great works of the classical tradition will almost certainly be performed and appreciated as long as human society exists. But I wonder if that will ever be true for most of what we call new music. Could it be that the human brain is wired in such a way that tonality will always be what becomes immortal? I don’t know, but I’m open to trying to appreciate other approaches to musical expression.
New music should just be called Entartete Kunst. Death cultists who built hideous architecture, sculpture, paintings are doing the same horror with music unsurprisingly. All civilisations built great art. Except XXth century West that only made universally revulsing art.
Humans are "wired" to listen to music with a tonal centre and a series of relationships between the notes that are NOT arbitrary. Modality or tonality, it is not important, but there must be a well built structure, both in the notes and the music made with them.
One of his public lectures, Leonard Bernstein took up a 12-tone phrase from a piano piece of Schoenberg and demonstrated how it sounds tonal even though it uses all the 12 tones. More than that, he seemed to want to demonstrate how beautiful Schoenberg's music is. To me, Schoenberg's music is very romantic. Look at how ecstatic Glenn Gould is when he is playing Schoenberg. People have been fooled by Schoenberg's words advocating the equal use of the 12 tones. Despite his theorizing, his purpose was to create beautiful music. To answer your question, the human brain is wired to SEEK tonality in sound sequences, I think. Schoenberg's, Bernstein's, and the listeners' brains did seek tonality. But, that doesn't mean that music has to include an "objective" tonality to be good. Tonality is subjective.
@@ryofurue7132 If I remember well, in Schoenberg's harmony manual "Harmonielehre", he mentions that in some Bach's work there is a 12-tone sequence in a perfectly tonal composition.
@@andsalomoni In a perfectly tonal composition, there are sections where a lot of notes that don't belong to the key appear, making the tonality ambiguous. It's possible that a short section includes all the 12 tones while still being "more or less" tonal. I think we usually call this "chromaticism" and Bach's compositions often includes such sections. Bernstein's explanation is in the opposite direction. Schoenberg's 12-tone compositions don't appear to include any tonal center, it sounds perfectly atonal, but if you listen very very carefully, you start to hear tonality . . .
On the consumer side of things, if I had to guess, I'd say more people probably listened to orchestral music in the past year than at any other point in history. Pick a well-known historical composer like Mozart, Beethoven, Bach, Rachmaninoff, Tchaikovsky, etc, and I guarantee more people listened to their music last year than in their lifetimes due to distribution. It may not be the MOST listened to music, but it is still far from dead consumption-wise. It's not the only thing feeding creativity, but if there's consumption, there will be creation.
As always, the cream will likely rise to the top over time. There are plenty of forgotten composers throughout the history of the western classical tradition who were highly successful trend setters and standard bearers during their lives but are almost completely forgotten.
You have more confidence that the future listeners are superior to the present ones than I have. I think many amazing composers have been forgotten. For now.
@@dylanmcdermott1110 Public still don’t catch up because those sounds are instinctively unpleasant. Why do you think there is a constant vibration ratio between notes? Because there is a way that it should be.
@@dylanmcdermott1110 "Caught up"? Please take your snobbery elsewhere. This is not music. It is not human. It is inhuman, cold, and meaningless. Most people aren't so masochistic to subject themselves to such torture.
While I agree with the point about Mozart's Don Giovanni not being whistled immediately after the performance, the issue is Don Giovanni CAN be whistled, it has a tune, a strong melody, whereas much modern classical is more focused on texture and new sound qualities etc. There is less focus on melody, which (along with rhythm) is the one thing people can take home. As good as an "experience" listening can be, to truly cement songs in popular consciousness the music needs to live in people's memories. Unfortunately the more complex and textural the music, the less it can be recalled. This major difference is probably due to the intended audience. Don Giovanni was the popular album of its time. Modern classical is written for a learned audience familiar with the classical canon, not a lay person simply wanting entertainment. As long as modern classical is written as part of classical music discourse and not to entertain lay people, its influence will remain squarely within its current bounds as an avant-garde legacy.
This brings me back to my music study days in college at Purdue University where our professor (G. Bradley Bodine) would play us his contemporary pieces and they just blew my mind. He also talked about festivals like there where hearing a triad was a rare thing. Thanks for the video!
Hey Nahre -- one more point that I think gets left out of talks like this. Performing music is almost always more interesting and fulfilling than just listening. Back in college, I was in a group called "New Vocal Arts Ensemble", where we did some way-out stuff...in the mid-1970's. I found that I didn't really like listening to most of the stuff we performed, but *performing* it -- that was always interesting.
Good observation. I've also noticed that I love playing classical music, but it's not my go-to for listening. Probably because I mostly listen to music in the car or other settings with background noise, and it's hard to focus on it or pick out all the details. I usually listen in depth to classical pieces I'm trying to learn or that I'll be experiencing in an upcoming concert.
@@matthewszymanski7037 That makes sense. Idk anyone who'd listen to classical music on their way to the beach to have a good time with friends lol .. But there may be some that do, who knows lol
This is one of your best videos yet. Im pumped to listen to every song featured here. Is there any playlist from this festival available on yt? Thanks, nahre!
1:38. That’s the issue. I honestly think that good music doesn’t need to shock people. We don’t need something crazy, but rather music that is enjoyable and that grabs people’s attention not by being so outlandish and horrible sounding but rather from amazing orchestration and theme writing.
I just want to go on stage - one of the big concert halls - and take a dump. I've even got a title for the work: "Taking a dump", but I fear the world's still not really ready for it. I'll keep trying though. Maybe start with some smaller venues and work my way up to the top.
Thank you Nahre. It is one of the best videos made about classical music and us today. For me, classical music is/was always the treasure of musical creations that resisted contemporary taste. I think it takes more than the combination of instruments and players trained in a certain method playing in a technically perfect building to bridge the time. The fact that people of today and people of other centuries enjoy the same creation makes it classical even if that music isn't on the same complex level as it is today. That doesn't mean experimental won't be classical, but it's up to the next generations to discover the classical value of the experiments we do. ( It's not about definitions. We all are able to read books or use a dictionary).
9:10 "I don't believe people were whistling the tunes of Don Giovanni in the streets of Prague the day after the premiere". Well, they probably did. Don Giovanni was a thunderous triumph in Prague. Just look at the review on the Prague Post Newspaper on November 3, 1787: "On Monday [October] 29th, the Italian opera company gave the ardently awaited opera by Maestro Mozart, Don Giovanni. Connoisseurs and musicians say that Prague has never yet heard the like. Herr Mozart conducted in person: when he entered the orchestra pit, he was received with three-fold cheers, which again happened when he left it. Everybody, on the stage and in the orchestra, strained every nerve to thank Mozart by rewarding him with a good performance. The unusually large attendance testified to unanimous approbation.” I don't have anything against experimentation. I actually love it. It's just that I think "new" is terribly overrated. Freedom can also enslave us and keep anything from accumulating, and very good and original things can come from trying to express something in an already known common language.
It should be enough to understand the laws of musical sound, to avoid the terrible lack of meaning and mandatory disturbance in this "experimental" stuff. In Indian classical music, they know these laws, and have been making music for some 5000 years without discontinuities, and are far from exhausting it.
Good video. Exploration of important topic. Remember that "at one time, all music was new." If it speaks something to you, it's good. Let's remain open and flexible, not closed and pre-judging. Excellent treatment of the context. Everything in the universe is dynamic, constantly moving and changing. Why is music different?
I’m a radio host in the National Radio Station in Bulgaria, and my topic is contemporary classical music. I wanted to say “thank you” for sharing this video, because I don’t think a lot of people know what diversity we have today (especially in a small country like mine). Most of the guest that you met are composers, that I feature and dream about meeting. Love your spectrum of curiosity, I’ve been watching your videos since doing Happy birthday in composer’s styles. Continue being an inspiring person! ❤
I get so inspired and full of hope watching this. The major difference between "classical" music shown here and most other modern produced music - is that so many people are contributing with their emotions in a single performance. It's so powerful. There are wonderful music everywhere but there is an untapped stream of listening experience within contemporary classic music. And, oh, I so much want to visit Hamburg Elbphilhamonie!
I've tried pretty hard to listen to modern classical music and will continue to give it a chance to make friends with my ears. But it's just not what I'm interested in. I guess what I do love about it though, is that there is so much variety to classical music. That's always a good thing.
Except that in this " modern " classical field there are more gate keepers than anywhere else ... There isn't that much variety , it follows the lineage of " composers " like boulez who made a fortune being funded by tax payers money in France and Germany . Their " music " has never been popular ( for good reasons ) and is even widely mocked by most people .
@@Horatio_on_the_Beat Tax payers money shouldn't be used to make someone like pierre boulez rich , he is basically a meme to most people ( who pay taxes ) . It is always the same thing , public funds rarely go to unknown talented creator and without that system it would be harder to get the highly unpopular wrongly named " avant garde " stuff .
Contemporary "classical" music WILL lead to the death of classical music. People are simply afraid to say the truth; Most contemporary "classical" music is awfully bad.
Four years ago, you did a video reimagining classic video game music. In light of this video taking about the state of classical music, I would love to see you cover the “rediscovery” of classical / orchestral music through video games and films. Concerts like The Final Fantasy Orchestra or Video Games Live sell out to global audiences who have found joy in seeing epic game scores performed live and accompanied by flashy and fun visuals. We’ve been to several such concerts here in the DC area (Myerhoff Symphony Hall and Strathmore Arts Center). I wish more people knew about this. I’ve always appreciated classical music and video game scores have revitalized my love of live performance. Even my wife enjoys the game score concerts and she does NOT play any video games 😂
The difference between instrumental and choral music, being text, allows choral music to continually change into a new unique form without abandoning pallatable harmonic structure. I highly recommend talking with choral conductors and composers about these differences...the voice as an instrument, i have found, can display an ocean of heart like no wind or string or other instrument can
I think the best music that will come from all of this will take the old structures of yesterday's music, and utilize the new chaos and groundbreaking sounds of today to make something even more beautiful. But who knows? The real question is, if music is a mirror of history, what does this music say about us today?
This is a very thoughtful video, thank you! I would say, having been a music composition student, that this new "classical" music really caters toward the academic listener. The everyday person may try to listen for the novel experience, but then go back to their Beethoven or Van Halen. I compose eclectic electronic music and work in SuperCollider. I love sound experimentation. But I aim to touch the everyday person with more palatable nuances.
“Beauty in music is too often confused with something that lets the ear lie back in an easy chair. Many sounds that we are used to do not bother us, and for that reason we are inclined to call them beautiful. Frequently-possibly almost invariably-analytical and impersonal test will show that when a new or unfamiliar work is accepted as beautiful on its first hearing, its fundamental quality is one that tends to put the mind to sleep.” -Charles Ives
Classical music (Renaissance to late Romantic) is based on acoustic properties and our anatomy and perception of sound. While there is a certain variance, there is clearly an aesthetic aspect to harmonic sounds and the interaction of these. This interaction of pitches is quite fascinating in a sense very simple and extremely complex at the same time. Everybody who tried to write something of similar quality like a Chopin Nocturne will understand what I mean. The balance between harmonic and dissonant is crucial.
@@prototypeinheritance515 yet it was in the boundary of tonal music. Until the Schönberg it was fine. Although he composed atonal musics, he yet maintained the structures so we could hear and follow what he composed. But contemporary music, we can’t even catch up the progress. It’s like just hearing an irritating combination of noise. You guys will say it’s just perfect depiction of natural sounds, but in fact, natural sounds are based on the constant ratio between notes and the constant vibration ratio of those notes.
@@prototypeinheritance515 It is all a question of dosis. And Wagner used consonant tonal chords, that is exactly what I spoke of. He also is very much in the tradition of tension between consonance and dissonance.
I'm sure there were tons of people asleep during Beethoven's 9th symphony premier. They must have been shocked when the rest of the audience burst into applause in the middle of the movements.
But is there an audience for this music? Personally I hear very very little that I find interesting in this very contemporary music or would ever want to listen to again and I do listen to some Webern and Berg.
To be honest, a lot of what was in this video sounds amazing and definitely makes me hear more. Sofia Gubaidulina, Lisa Streich, Rebecca Saunders and Anna Thorvaldsdóttir in particular.
It seems to me that it goes beyond music. It's like we live in an atonal society, an aperspectival society, with no home nor direction. We have no message to convey, no beauty to evoke, nothinh sacred to devote our lives and our music to. Just a bunch of people trying to invent new problems so they can come up with new solutions and be seen as heroes. We need to keep it simple, we need to go to get to our tonic, we need to return home.
"Not much has really changed". Don Giovanni was a failure in Prague but a success a few months later in Vienna. And Mozart was a very popular musician in his lifetime. Things HAVE changed. For the record this festival is just a portion of what modern classical music is. Composers like Julian Anderson, Bacri, Holloway, Chin, Connesson, Muhly, Meltzer, Bates, Adès, Escaich, Hersant, Monk, Pärt, Beffa, Shaw, Lang, Tanguy and… (many others that have one foot solidly anchored in some past tradition) would NOT get invited there. In the 60's this kind of festival wouldn't have considered living composers such as Britten, Harrison, Khachaturian, Mompou or Dutilleux. This radical modernity is legit and sometimes exciting but it's just what it is, not the whole thing.
I do think that's something that people miss when it comes to talking about "oh, such and such composition was also derided in its time, we are just repeating history". I really don't think that's true. Rite of Spring may have incited a riot during the ballet premiere but when the orchestral music was released standalone a bit later the work was called genius by almost everyone. Not to mention other Stravinsky Ballets like Petrushka and Firebird which were composed around the same time were extremely popular as well. I think people tend to "play up" the amount of drama and discord composers sowed, but in reality a lot of that drama is over exaggerated. Even the 12 tone serialists like Schoenberg and Berg I feel like are the polar opposite of modern avant-garde music- 12 tone was all about subtlety, embracing form and structure instead of resorting to shock tactics and bombasticism.
Great documentary and interviews! Bravo, Nahre! I don’t always like new music, but when it is expressive and touches me, I am willing to explore it more.
Thank you! You don't have to love new and experimental music nor do you have to enjoy it. But you should appreciate that it's there and that people are willing to push artistic boundaries. Like you so beautifully said, "...there's a limit to what we can understand about our current times while we are living through it..." - so much of what we consider in western art music as normative was completely experimental and not widely accepted when it was composed. Time moves on and the mainstream adapts - I hear music playing in the supermarket today that was underground and avant-garde in the 1980s.
The trouble with the quest for originality in art is that sooner or later you get to where the only thing left to do is produce increasingly bizarre work. Douglas Adams joked in the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy about an entire civilisation that crumbled under the weight of fashion. 'Every year the shoes were either much too large, or much too small, and occasionally even joined together at the heels'. I think new classical music has got to the 'joined together at the heels' stage.
Do you know enough examples to call for such a narrow judgement? A line can be drawn at any point in history, why put up with the romantics, if we could stick with Bach and Vivaldi, they composed enough music for us to keep our concert halls full until the end of times (for humans)? What’s the point of bothering with all of those composers who came after with their huuuuuuuge egos? e. g. Beethoven, Schumann, Brahms, Wagner, Mahler, Bruckner... How does that proposition sound? Just s as absurd as yours, truly...
That's a good point, and sometimes it gets hard to identify what is bizarre just for the sake of being bizarre and calling for attention, or what is honestly people exploring something interesting that ends up having a certain appeal, because we are very good at rationalizing and "giving excuses". I'm sure John cage had a great explanation for why his piece was awesome, but in the end, it's still just silence, which is great, but I prefer to enjoy it at home, on my own, for free 🤷🏻♀️
Many pieces are very disrespecful to audiences. Imagine sitting in the audience listening to people's coughs for 5 minutes and paying half a day's worth of work.
@@auricia201 I agree Auricia. I want to think that it's a genuine exploration, but to me, much of it comes across as bizarre for the sake of it. I've just listened to a live performance of Yes' song 'Awaken' by Jon Anderson with the Todmobile Orchestra, and was left in tears of joy, as I often am by that recording. Not classical, certainly not modern classical, but I'm struck by my profound emotional reaction to it, as opposed to just being baffled and sometimes completely turned off by modern classical music. In the end, we all have different tastes and maybe if a piece for fried artichokes in a vacuum pleases people, then it's fine. I just don't think it will save the genre from being increasingly ignored.
Have you ever listened to Human Story 3 by James Ferraro? It's sort of related to what your saying. In that it seeks to make classical acoustic instruments sound like their digital counterparts. I think it's really beautiful stuff, but of course, maybe it would sound boring to someone else.
In 1971, Frank Zappa had The Royal Philharmonic Orchestra at his disposal for the soundtrack of 200 Motels. Many people were appalled at what The Royal Philharmonic Orchestra participate in. Compared to some of the more modern compositions, 200 Motels is downright traditional.
Hey Nahre! Great video by the way, I must say. I can relate to music as great variety then what it was more than 50 years ago where it was a great battle between traditionalists and modernists. Nowadays it feels like you can do whatever you want to be successful, there is no trends that rule or professors for that matter. For me and probably many of us composers writes music that is more or less "in between". There is not one expression that makes one composer, there are several in a single composer that can master all types of orchestration, styles, compositional techniques that can be your leading voice and that is the power underneath the abstract thinking, the emotional that gets into your brain and down into your heart. So nice to see some composers that you knew from your studies on this video!
Lots to think about…loved the point about “new doesn’t equal classical” along with the point a commenter made that many composers were famous in their day but forgotten now. Only time can make clear what new form will become classic. It feels like the music conversation is highly analogous to the art one: there has to be evolution but the work has to be somehow accessible…but not too accessible…
Thanks for the interesting video and your great channel in general. In my opinion, it’s dying (or dead, depending on your vantage point), because no one will ever put [most of] this on their Spotify playlist to enjoy except maybe some small slice of other contemporary composers, period, the end. I’m confused why no conversations about contemporary music/with composers ever tries to contend with that fact.
Nahre, you are the best!!! Thank you for sharing your knowledge and expertise with us. To me personally modern classical music is Joe Hisaishi. Modern experimental avant-garde stuff is very painful for me to listen to. I love music that makes me experience beautiful feelings and emotions deep inside my heart and soul. And modern crazy, wild and extreme avant-garde stuff doesn't do that for me. The feelings and emotions it makes me experience are not pleasant and beautiful, but opposite to that. But Hisaishi's music brings tears to my eyes, melts my heart and touches my so so deeply. Thank you for your deep and professional insight. I admire you and your channel.
Working in a classical concert venue I can tell you right now that the contemporary classical composers obsessed with atonal music and showcasing it does not go down well with most audiences. Many stay at the bar or turn up to the 2nd half to hear Beethoven or Dvorak or Brahms or whatever is playing and I can't blame them. In music universities many courses give 1 year to tonal music and then focus on atonal music. Most students can't compose a simple piece in ternary form, or are incapable of motivic development, or the skill sets saught after in the film and games industry (creating tonal music that colours scenes and environments in film, tv and video games). Classical music suffers from the same very narrow repertoire of tonal music, and then suffers from incredibly bad atonal music that only a musicologist who sees the world through a lense of total deconstruction could enjoy. People will chat about Chopin, Ravel and Debussy for years to come, I honestly struggle to name contemporary composers that don't write semi-tonal music (David Bruce springs to mind as one of the few I like).
Thanks Nahre! I love how you approach every topic with curiosity and respect. I was definitely in the camp you described at the beginning of the video: "what more is there to experiment aren't we tired of this yet?" - but I think I'm gaining a new appreciation!
Despite the number of people praising Nahre's video and engaging with it meaningfully, there seems to also be a large group here to simply bash "contemporary-classical" music and saying essentially, "don't bother with this stuff because it doesn't make sense and it's not supposed to." This attitude misses one of the most central points of Nahre's video: contemporary-classical music can not be generalized in any way. There is a ton of music being created and so easily distributed across the world, and of any style you can imagine. Nahre herself is a composer and her style seems to very effectively incoperate elements of the "familiar" as one commenter said modern music lacks. Post-minimalist composers certainly blend the idea of familiarity and novelty. Another point of the video is that, nothing can possibly be avant-garde, nothing can be shocking, we already did that in the 20th-century, but people are still hating on music 100 years old. Stravinsky, Schoenberg, Shostakovich, and Poulenc were all alive at the same time in the first half of the 20th century. This is incredible proof that everything after the romantic period became personal to each composer. There is no style that is modern, no style that is unified, not one that is academic, not one that wins all competitions, not one that gets commissioned. Until we learn to recognize composers for having individual stylistic approaches to music making, a productive conversation about contemporary classical music can not be had. Anyways, TLDR: please stop generalizing all composers these days as one group that you can throw stones at and say ruins your Baroque listening on Sunday afternoons.
You're literally generalizing it by calling it contemporary-classical. It's not classical, it's not even music. It's shit. Zero of these "composers" ZERO will ever have their name mentioned 100 years from now. None of them. Their "music" will never exist past their deaths. They will be remembered for what their sound is. Nothing. Absolutely nothing.
I think your argument here is flawed at the fundamental level. "Until we learn to recognize composers for having individual stylistic approaches to music making, a productive conversation about contemporary classical music can not be had." I'd argue that all the composers in this video ARE CONFORMING to this performance-art-esque ostentatious subgenre of composition. It seems more radical now to compose with triads than something that sounds like cleaning your piano strings with sandpaper. I think it's an echo chamber of self validation while the outside world laughs, brushes it off, and turns on spotify to Phillip Glass or Tchaikovsky.
@@lmichaelgreenjr But you are ignoring the individual approaches of the composers in this video. The results of their music might be similarly avant garde, but they didn't get their by the same method nor does it seem to me that any of them could write one another's pieces. This video is also only including pieces chosen for a European festival, which are known in the classical music world as being the places for the most intensely modernist works. You can find so many other styles elsewhere in the world and in other scenes besides festival pieces. In my personal experience, about as many people use triads as don't in the 21st-century classical music scene. You also mention Glass as someone the public chooses over anyone else which seems strange, as it suggests to me that minimalism is already a thing of the past, when minimalism as a technique is more modern than many of the techniques composers from this video use. John Adams grew away from the minimalist tradition in his later years, but his early pieces are quite strictly minimalist and he is still inspired by the style and he is arguably the leading living composer in the world, certainly America. You are saying my argument doesn't exist, that there is only one style of modern music, but I assure you I didn't just say it because it sounds good and it's a total myth. I believe it and most of the living composers I listen to can easily prove their differences from one another.
@@johngalik6609exactly, avant-garde ain't a monolyth at all. Finnissy is so much different from Boulez, who's so different from Ligeti, who's so different from Xenakis, who's so different from Sorabji, who's so different from David Lang, etc. If you can't tell the difference, that's sincerely a you problem
If there is no rules, no standard, nothing to keep things organized then it’s not music. It’s sound. This stuff sounds bad, and this is the reason why this music genre is laughed at by most sensibel people.
There are no rules in the arts, but there are consequences. One of those consequences could be that you'll have to go through life without much of an audience.
From most of the videos I've watched discussing modern classical music, it seems like there's an obsession with timbre and texture... while everything else falls to the side. Although there are some interesting sounds that come out of that experimentation, it often feels unjustified, as if there was no message trying to be conveyed other than "oooh that's a cool sound ain't it" Granted, I don't know much about classical music (let alone modern pieces) so I might be totally wrong.
You are right, this stuff is pretty much random noise, accompanied by some fake-intellectuals saying their typical fake-intellectual lines, like "you wouldn't understand it" (there is nothing to understand).
Modern classical is a postmodern disease. Those people are destroying what's left of classical western culture. Big money powers are behind this disgusting movement. Read Who paid the Piper by Saunders.
I would recommend you go to a concert hall yourself, the experience of such a piece is much different in person. Espescially when paired together with a more established piece, the contrast between modern sounds and the more conventional ones is really great imho
To me there's an economic issue. I spend a lot of effort getting to and from a concert and the cost of tickets is at the edge of my budget. I am NOT going to attend a concert where for half the time my aural sensibilities are assaulted by what is often times a cacophony. The result is that I fall back on recordings and and performers become less supported. I am certain I am not alone in this situation.
I thought this might have been about beginning music students not being taught enough classical music. This is more of a beautiful description of the evolution of "high brow" music. Luciano Berio and George Crumb come to mind as those ahead of their time. Reports of audience reactions are fun.
People have been sounding the death knell of classical music for decades. (Norman Lebrecht made a career out of it.) It's nothing to worry about. It's still around, still being created, performed, recorded, and loved. And with classical music's uniquely strong--indeed, almost all-consuming and defining--obsession with its past and its canon, it's normal that there will be friction and misunderstanding (or antipathy) when it comes to current experimental classical music. And if someone comes to classical music via Mozart or Tchaikovsky and finds joy in those styles and sound-worlds, it's no surprise--and no problem--if they don't get (or want to get) a contemporary avant-garde piece.
Anyone who has seen the 3:30AM line at Carnegie Hall just get a rush ticket to hear Yuja Wang's Rachmaninoff Marathon, you know that classical music is nor dying, it is very much alive and thriving.
There's a fraud. What they want to see is her prancing around in lingerie without any underwear. Talent-wise - she's a little better than your best local piano teacher.
For playing yes but new compositions are really very bad, anti musical, cold, theoretical and remarkably less interesting than jazz and even some pop rock.
Number Six: Other than a few avant garde musicians it is despised. We shudder whenever the conductor must "explain" the next piece. It's not that some of these works are not dazzling or challenging - it's that no one likes them. It may be a case of natural evolution for the "new". I've migrated from Mozart, Bach, Beethoven, Chopin, Brahms, Rachmaninoff to Scriabin, Szymanowski, Berg and several minor composers. Searching for newness. Another problem - they can't be remembered. On vacations we'd sing the Beatles, church songs, old musicals or even intone a Bach fugue (musical family). But who will ever (want to) reproduce the examples here? Oddness for the sake of oddity. Not just switching locations or having performers do silly things or one long note or silence. Liszt's controversial " triangle" in his concerto cannot compare to plane engines, traffic or unintelligible screaming heard today.
this was a very amazing video to watch and has really made me realize that yes we are in the current contemporary era. i find myself often thinking what it would be like if i could go back in time and experience Tchaikovsky's First violin concerto during its debut. of course, its valid for me to think that because like, if you have heard that concerto, then 9 times out of 10 you'd agree that its one of the best ever written but something greater than that could be coming out now in our era. so, to everyone who loves music lets continue support this modern composer so that one day they may be the new tchaikovsky, liszt, paganini, beethoven, mozart, wienawski, shotakovich, prokofiev.
The interest in that type of music seems to be miniscule (I would have loved some data on that) and it can only be realised due to major subsidies from government as it seems to me. Additionally this seems to be especially true for european contemporary music and less so for american. I would've wished for a more critical view on that aspect.
@@ronald3836 right back at you! I think it is also important to notice, that subsidies for culture are not generally wrong and bad completely (although should always be scrutinized) but the imbalance here between relevance and financing from government is just mind boggling and frankly wrong.
A lot of these composers seem to be scared of being seen as "populist" in the eyes of their colleagues, they are scared of writing something that may be appealing to a "layman". They need to get rid of that fear somehow, then modern concert music may have a future.
@@garrysmodsketches So "pop" would be more accessible and less challenging without being outright pop. ... I would NOT want to be given that assignment! : D
@@SelectCircle i think composers should strive to reach a golden mean between the two extremes: accessibility and complexity. It is an extremely difficult task, but great masters succeeded in achieving this balance. Their music is appealing for average people, but it is also complex and rich and full of ideas and is interesting to profession musicians, "connoisseurs". Bach's music would be one example of such balance. Again, to write such music is extremely difficult, it takes a lot of craft and work. But I think it's worth the effort.
As a new composer, I write stuff that sounds cool to me. For me, I think making music that is pleasing and interesting is one of my biggest goals. While there's a lot of merit in the avant-garde style pieces, I kind of don't find writing in that sort of way being appealing. But the cool thing about those experimental pieces is that while a lot of it may not land, some of the techniques can be used for future music in different contexts. Contemporary musical techniques are can have really cool effects and the way that they are used is what can make one new composition different from your favorite one to an average one.
I work as a songwriter, but I have a friend that lectures in composition in the UK. My issue with some modern music is that while it may be art, to me it's not music. For me, to be music it should contain some form of melody, harmony, and rhythm. Art can use sound as a device to make a statement and convey a point, but it can't really be classed as music without those things.
As others have mentioned, any breaking of convention should have a rationale behind it other than just breaking convention. One can intellectually rationalise almost anything, but that doesn't mean one should.
This was such a thoughtful and insightful video. Thank you for exposing me to the works of current composers. I am in a kind of limbo when it comes to new "classical" music (apart from your compositions, of course). More of this would be very helpful. I could also see (as the third clarinet of the third clarinets) how terrifying it could be to try to perform this music. On the other hand, I like experimenting with sounds myself, so I can see how it could be satisfying to be part of a group doing this.
There is plenty of "the emperor has no clothes" music going on in the new music world and it deserves its utter irrelevance. Eric Whitacre is a great example of a living composer who balances elements of the approachable and the innovative
Caroline Shaw as well, a lot of her stuff is very tonal but she sprinkles in very innovative and interesting techniques and colors that make it really new and fresh
Wholeheartedly agree. I’m a violinist and next week will be working with one of the composers interviewed for this video. I find it hard to believe that anyone really wants to hear the performance.
I agree, as much as it pains me. The thought of entering the world of classical composers when my time at university is finished is incredibly daunting---because of how "old-fashioned" and "tonal" my music is (I write in a hybrid Impressionist-Jazz-Baroque-film style), I fear that I will be rejected by my contemporaries. How do I confront that?
@@andrewfortmusic homie, be accountable to audiences not eggheaded academics hooting and hollering over orchestras like twats. Impressionist/baroque jazz sounds great to me, you've got your foot in 3 already time-tested familiar genres there
Composers are killing classical music by writing stuff nobody wants to listen to. Here in Sweden composers get works commissioned from state funded orchestras to be played one time and never again. That's just artificial life support. Other art forms generally left the experimentation after the 60s and went back to (slightly altered) consonance. Classical music never did. That's why people aren't consuming classical music anymore, as the are say literature. You DO need references. There's no way you can understand and enjoy something if it all is new and strange to you.
I've been a choral performer in the LA Phil's Green Umbrella concerts, and have seen audiences embrace or utterly reject "bleeding edge" music. "Survivor bias" will determine, in a century, what people think of classical music in the early 21st century; the rest will be left for 22nd century musicologists to mull over. Thanks for featuring Eric Whitacre near the end - love his stuff! You may also enjoy music by Jasper Randall as performed by Los Robles Master Chorale: ruclips.net/user/results?search_query=lrmasterchorale+randall
I personally don’t see these examples as classical music, more like experimental music using classical instruments, I do after they are more like “genre-less”, but 99% of all produced music won’t be master pieces anyways. I do hope they can find the new “rules” that allows them to make music that we can enjoy like how we enjoy Mozart, Rachmaninov, or BB king.
I respectfully disagree with almost every word I just heard. The reason that so much modern music (avant-garde, or call it what you will) is so difficult (actually, unpleasant) is precisely because it has abandoned so many of the rules that allow an ordinary, non-specialist person to understand and enjoy what they are listening to. One of the contributors said that what I have just outlined allows composers to explore new ways of expressing themselves. While that may be true, it is problematic for at least two reasons. 1) The Abolition of so many tried and tested conventions has made a great deal of music (which is organised sound) indistinguishable from noise (which is not). See 'Voice Leading: The Science Behind A Musical Art' by David Huron for a detailed and fascinating discussion of the difference. 2) Each and every piece that I, for example, have ever written and am currently writing uses functional tonal harmony, and yet each and every one of them is a new way of expressing myself: none of my pieces have ever been written by anyone else, or me, before. They are (despite their Neopolitan chords and viio7/V's and what have you) completely original. To tear the language apart would like be what doing I have in this sentence, simply sake for of it. In any case, if someone were to hear one of my pieces in, say, 200 years' time would it matter to them whether it had been written in 2024, 1924 or 1724? I think not. That is something which is completely missed by 'modern' composers: they, almost to the last man and woman, seem to be obsessed with the 'now'. That, in my view, takes precedence over their music, or, more specifically, its place in the canon. The difference between their music and, say, Strivinsky's Rite or Messian's Turangalilia is that the latter two understood that tension and release (be it harmonic, textural or some other aspect of the music) is dependent on the familiar in order for those two aspects of the music to have any meaningful effect. It is the most basic lesson that you learn when writing second species counterpoint, albeit on a much grander scale: you can't have the light without the dark. So much of modern music just sounds like the latter.
I've been attending a classical music composing class for a few years now, fascinating how notions from the baroque and romantic eras explain and refines all the jazz stuff I've been playing for years. Now, it didn't make me listen to classical music either, the absence of swing and groove makes me lose interest very quickly.
We have enjoyed your videos over the past year or so and have learned a lot about the music you have discussed. On this matter, however, we disagree. The majority of what we have been subjected to seems to be a mix in varying proportions of The Emperor's New Clothes and The Royal Nonesuch (Huckleberry Finn).
i think its sad classical musicians think they need to go to weird atonal "shock-value" elements to make something original and of quality. theres still so much to study in brasilian music, blues, jazz harmony, new electronic music, that you can try to reinvent genres by combinations that are viable. it seems pretentious to ignore these disciplines and go to weird shocking places.. i just dont relate to it at all.
I'm a composer : I have no score anymore, only pieces title, and every time they're played all is improvised. It's for 2 to 100 people, with instruments : you don't even have to know how to play them. You can choose any instrument you want, and it doesn't have to be something known : improvise your instrument. You can play or not. Welcome to the 21st Century Classical world.
@@myklkay 4.33 is just a meme, not a musical composition. Improvisation is not composition because improvisation happens in the moment, while composition takes time and involves planning.
@@garrysmodsketches So the fact that many pieces are born from improvisation render them not valid because it should take time and planning ? I feel sorry for many jazz composers too...
@@myklkay what? No. For example, Autumn leaves is a composition that is pre-written. However, improvising over autumn leaves would not be composing because you play melodies in the moment when you improvise. An improvised piece is valid, but we are talking about the process of creating music, not the end result. Composition and improvisation are fundamentally different.
What an interesting video and I love that you touch on the 'breaking of rules' and I used to feel that when new eras of music emerges it's often in rebellion to a previous era. It will be interesting to see where music takes us next.
"The trouble with music appreciation in general is that people are taught to have too much respect for music; they should be taught to love it instead."
- Igor Stravinsky (New York Times Magazine, 9/27/1964)
Animals are dying for sure 👉 Dominion (2018)
@@WiseandVegan i'm lovin' it.
sir. ronalad mac'Ka Domaldionzon iii.
@@christopher-miles q. ur. self.
🤮🤮
As a simple consumer of (mostly) classical music, I would not be rushing to hear these concerts. However, my ears have been opened so many times over the years, that I’m glad that composers are still expressing in new ways. If I listen to these pieces, it will be when I’m streaming music into my home and feeling adventurous. Regardless, I give full credit to the musicians that can give these composers the voice to make a statement.
“Music, I feel, must be emotional first and intellectual second.”
- Maurice Ravel
T H I S
Animals are dying for sure 👉 Dominion (2018)
Ravel was critized both for being too experimental and too old fashioned. Since he has found his way into the Canon it was perhaps simply just timeless. I also suggest looking up videos of his house. He was an interesting man who certainly embodied this advice.
100% agree. Of course there is some intellect involved to get good music written, it is like other professions also a craft, especially when writing for orchestra. But my full conviction is that listening to music should be an enjoyable experience, which can of course range from relaxing, calming, activating to bringing sad and happy feelings in resonance.
Excellent. And the quoting too. One Gershwin asked Ravel to teach composition or orchestration, or so. Ravel rejected. Continue to do your thing and do not try to become like me. Ravel did not think of himself to be really good and his now famous Bolero was a "practice piece for orchestra without music to be conducted by an iron conductor."
It does matter a little bit how you interpret 'dying'. The video makes a very good case for it not dying in the sense that there is a tonne of innovation still happening, there are a tonne of talented composers producing interesting new music, and maybe more people would be able to enjoy it if they learned to listen to it differently, because it does require a different sort of appreciation that lots of earlier classical music, and even more so vs modern non-classical music. And videos like these are amazing for helping the uneducated like me enjoy this music so thank you so much for making them.
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.
Well said
The video convinced me that death has set in some time ago.
I think "dying" is just a clickbait word used by youtubers. Really no point getting semantic about it, just interpret it as "decline", which is true.
This dude wrote a whole thesis my gosh.
@@hoosas5998 At least he added content.
Normally I avoid these kinds of posts about classical music (or many others) dying. If they don't get any oxygen the fire burns out. However Nahre's posts are erudite and so well communicated so I took a chance. So. Glad. I did, This is a spot on discussion and guide on exploring any music that's new to a listener. Bravo Nahre!
It sounds like modern classical music is being redefined as "any music which uses classical instrumentation".
Brah that already happened like decades ago
And what is classical instrumentation supposed to be?
I think it's something more along the lines of: "Any music that is supposed to be 'performed'" (whatever 'performed' may really mean). Most pop is mostly meant to be listened to on audio systems, while here it seems the music is meant to be performed in front of an audience.
Sadly, this seems all to prevalent but what choice do they have? I see little interest in classical music outside of a narrow audience.
That kind of is what the music that is now defined as classical was when it was first created
Classical music has been experimental for too long now. All the effort is in constantly creating new languages, to the point that we have forgotten that what matters most is not the language but the message. With many of the current composers I'm not sure there is even a message that is communicated anymore, other than "hey, listen to this, I have created yet another new language! Impressive, isn't it?"
Looks like post-modernism in music. Everybody has their own opinions, their own questions but no idea how to answer them or sort them out as good or bad.
Well “what matters most” is entirely subjective and there are many composers who don’t write in highly experimental musical languages. When you don’t understand a piece of music, the benefit of the composers being alive is that you can ask them questions, start a dialogue, and be curious about why they chose to compose the piece the way they did.
@@lionsmaine1238 Yea I guess I should've said what matters most to me. And to a _massive_ number of people.
yes, not unlike post modern and post post modern literature
When the aliens arrive we might be glad that we are used to hearing new languages.
I can listen to Chopin pieces 100 times and still want to and appreciate the 101st time. Contemporary classical music is interesting to listen to perhaps once or twice at most. Some are so painful to my ears I can hardly make it through the first time; or rather I’ll sit through it once just for the novelty of the experience perhaps.
Agreed. Whenever I’m at the symphony and they are trying a new modern piece I simply have to sit and bear through the treachery before I can listen to well… the actual music.
I have a degree in it and I agree. There are interesting pieces but on the whole it is empty. I’ve been down the rabbit hole and back.
Depends on the piece. Works by Caroline Shaw, Ted Hearne, Andrew Norman and Thomas Ades I could listen to again and again.
Try Thomas Ades and Hans Abrahamsen. They are very consonant. I can listen to them all day. I can also listen to Unsuk Chin on repeat but her music is too high pitched for some.
@@Uhor There are some modern composers out there who compose in older styles. I played one piece like that recently (Adagio for recorder quartet, by Matthias Maute), and it was really good. Because the composer wasn't trying to be avant garde - I think they simply wanted to make something beautiful, and they succeeded. I got the melody stuck in my head from practicing the soprano part. I wish we could have more of that, and less in the way of glorified noise with composers insisting that no one understands their brilliance. The greatness of music is not inversely proportional to the number of people who listen to and enjoy it.
I think modern classical music is a lot like free jazz. Firstly, it teaches you to enjoy letting go of expectations. If you are waiting for the chorus or the hook, you will be disappointed. However, if you just sit in the present and allow the ocean of music to take you, you will learn to enjoy the ride! If you fight it, you will be frustrated. Secondly, it teaches you to find music everywhere!
With that logic I might as well listen to traffic outside than go to these concerts
@CoolPigeon lol. You could also just not listen to it. If you like it, listen to it. If you don’t, dont. 🤷 no one’s forcing you lol
@@kneza96BG ...if you want there's music with that very concept : the "musique concrète" tradition
Definitely a lot like free jazz. AKA pretentiously cringe
@@slurpeexyza17 not all free jazz tho
This is an INCREDIBLE video. I am sad I couldn't be there at Elbphilharmonie this year but was delighted to see this video pop up on my screen with so many of my favorite musicians featured! You are doing so much justice to a community that, though it may not truly be the case, often feels as though it IS a futility or a dying project that we invest our lives into. I hope that as a result of this video that all who enjoy music, both musicians and non-musicians, have a greater sense of openness to the openness of contemporary music.
Its only natural that it doesnt attract a lot of people.
The average person likes to have a balance between familiarity and novelty, and this music really focusses on novelty.
Its not music thats made to be played in the background at the store, or to sing along to, or to dance to, so you already lose a lot of people there.
I do think its interesting, but its very nature doesnt make it something for everyone.
edit:
to be clear, i find this music "interesting" at most. I would never buy tickets for a concert like this, but if i accidentally stumbled across it i would give it a chance.
the only thing it really has going for me is novelty, which can be inspiring if you want to write music yourself; it might give you ideas on how you could apply these crazy ideas in music that also appeals to a wider audience. Once that novelty wears off (which will be after a couple of listens at most) i'd have no real reason to listen to this music.
It is for a very very small audience, I am quite confident that it is much less than 1% of people listening regularly to such music. Why should I listen to such, when I can spend my time enjoying the most beautiful pieces from Chopin or some Vivaldi baroque arias etc. which deeply touch me, while most of the contemporary music just goes on my nerves? There are exceptions of course.
@@nilsfrederking62 there’s a lot of beautiful music using traditional techniques being written now as well.
@@gstlb Indeed! Hence, there's no need for all this contemporary bullshit that pretends to be "music". 😂
Reminds me of the worst of the worst of what anyone can see in museums for contemporary art. 🤣
@@gstlb I suppose you mostly talk of music for movies and games. Else there was the "minimal music" Steve Reich and others which used tonal harmonies.
Well it depends. Old classical work still is high and kicking. Especially because dancing to them (Waltz, Quick Step, etc) still is popular (atleast in my experience, but then again Germany has a big history with classical music)
This new classic music (abusing any and every instrument in the orchestra in the some interpretations) is probably turning into a small, very special group
I think in your own unique ways, you, and @twosetviolin have played a big part in my life in turning my attention back to classical music again. 🙏🏼
Aye let's gooooooo! Twoset gang!
@@_rstcm aye let's gooooooooo twoset gang
In 1970 - high school theory class - we were exposed to 12 tone and other forms of modern classical music. We were assured that because the Rite of Spring was not welcomed at the time, everything we hear now, like John Cage abusing a piano, will sound like the Rite of Spring to people in the future.
That’s a logical fallacy I learned to remember, after spending way too much time trying to like “difficult” music.
I still fall into the trap of writing “clever” themes in 7/8, that nobody likes. For me, music that connects is better than music that doesn’t.
Stravinsky said we still have some beautiful music to discover in the key of C major.
Just as good classic rock music has moved to Nashville, I think the classical composers worth listening to - for me - have gone to the movies, and perhaps the video games.
Same with me, I spent too much time to try to understand this music, now I do not care, I only listen to what delights me. But there is a certain aspect of training, to sensitize your ear, to follow what is happening in the music which also can be delightful. Sometimes I am so moved of how beautifully things are "crafted" when I have a look at them, it makes it even more pleasurable to listen to these. I nearly exclusively listen to tonal music.
In defense of 7/8, that's the time signature of "Money" and it made it on the Billboard 100 in '72, so people must of liked it then. I never even noticed it was in 7/8 until I overheard an interview with Roger Waters and he pointed it out.
I love your comment so much. Yes, there's still beauty to find in C major, in 4/4, in classical music. And I really like composers like John Williams, Koji Kondo, Joe Hisaishi, they understand music is meant to be beautiful.
A few thoughts:
I think it is rather harsh and disingenuous to describe what John Cage did as 'abuse'. And in fact, I would say that in the contemporary world of music, Cage's preludes and etudes are seen with a similar eye to Stravinsky's Rite of Spring 50 years after its premiere; perhaps without the same level of popularity, but certainly with a similar distance or appreciation within and through history.
While I don't believe that writing themes in 7/8 is "clever" considering its novelty is several centuries old now and has been demonstrated with incredible conviction and quality by countless composers, I do believe that attempting to write things that are "clever", or more specifically to be seen AS clever, is a path that will always lead to the unmusical. Listeners can always sniff an inauthentic piece - hence why Boulez's Répons is listened to with the highest regard and appreciation while certain Ferneyhough works are not - though not to discredit his work as an artist, some of which is my favorite.
The quote regarding the "key of C major" was by Arnold Schoenberg, not Stravinsky.
@@d3l_nev beautiful? perhaps 'pretty' is the word you are looking for. All composers seek beauty, but not all seek prettiness. So many of the composers you may list as your favorite, such as Mozart, Beethoven, or Mahler, has plenty of music that did not seek to be pretty and yet are incredibly beautiful and have stood the test of time (take Mozart's dissonance quartet, Beethoven's Hammerklavier, or Mahler's 8 final movement)
Dunno. To me 99.9% avant-garde/whatever sounds like a bunch of people trying real hard to avoid criticism. Like they're trying to create a Safe Space in which any criticism of their work can be dismissed by saying "Oh, you just don't understand this brand new genre I've literally just created right now." And it's like, OK. Sure.
With regards to "breaking rules," composers like Beethoven "broke" rules. But they did it by building on top of previous work. Like an athlete breaking a record. Running/jumping/etc. faster than it seemed humanly possible. Or like a rocket scientist making a rocket able to not only fly but now also land. THAT is "moving things forward" to me.
Whereas this sound-design-with-classical-instruments-identifying-itself-as-music thing, on the other hand... I don't see how it's innovating anything. I KNOW how a piano is going to sound if you stab it with a chainsaw in a helicopter. It's neither surprising nor expanding my mind. It's just wasting my time.
This is correct. This is not music, it’s child’s play being lifted up as something amazing. No wonder people flock to songs that have literally 3 chords. You either have something extremely boring but your able to listen to it or you have people trying hard to compensate for a lack of writing skill creating “music” that sounds like a broken chainsaw.
Novelty and breaking rules are regarded as the ends in themselves rather than writing popular music which would take talent.
I’m a little late to the party but I really enjoyed your response. Funny and right on the money.
Thanks for this diplomatic video. I often find new music challenging as a composer, since my sensibilities tend towards broadly tonal music, and I’ve found it difficult to fit in with new music scenes because of this.
The thing is, in almost every art form there is a notion of fluctuation between tension and stability, because it’s the essence of storytelling that our human emotions relate to. It’s hard to enjoy art that only has tension and never any release.
While I understand (and share, at some point), I think it’s necessary to point out two things.
First, tension and release can be found in contemporary atonal music. Not only it has to with harmony (as in tonal music) there are other parameters (like dynamics, rhythm, timbre and texture) that can be managed in a way that creates tension and release). But I have to admit that the harmonic tension and release is so strong and important.
The second thing I wanted to say is that there are plenty of examples of traditional music without harmonic tension/release. I’m thinking of Javanese gamelan music or Babongo music.
@@jorge.iglesias I do think though that in modern western classical music the lack of harmony and melody is particularly catastrophical because they are so instrumental to the tradition of that type of music.
And also a certain way to handle tension and release in that harmonic and melodic sense is a fundamental trait of western classical music.
And an overall musically meaningful structure, starting from the very musical intervals..
If they discard all, and all that remains is the artificial 12 tone equal temperament plus a few INTELLECTUAL (not "musical") rules, then it is very difficult to get something that is "music".
@jorge.iglesias has a very good point but to create tension and release one needs expectation which means you need references too build up these expectations wether they are deceived or fulfilled. Therefore the (seemingly) total absence of rules or knowledge of the underlying rules makes it impossible or very discouraging to follow and appreciate anything. Still trying to keep an open mind though :)
insane generalisation
What's missing from all this is that music is a form of communication. It's a conversation. And to have a conversation with someone, you have to be speaking the same language. If each of these composer's goals is to create their own new, idiosyncratic language, then WHO exactly are they conversing with? What's the point of it all? At least works like 4'33 serve (or once served) as a kind of intelligible commentary. Cage was radical but at the end of the day, he was still conversing with his audience.
We need a Piero Manzoni in music too.
I love her take on this. She really found an idea here that is worth sharing and not something most people get the chance to think deeply about.
There's absolutely nothing deep about this 10 minutes RUclips video.
There is nothing deep about any of this music or the people who make this noise. We are flattering stunning and brave imbeciles.
I believe she's intentionally exposing the shysters, deceptively smart, and controversial for click$, as content creatures lean to mainstream tactics
I started listening to a contemporary piece but stopped after a couple of minutes. Then I listened to an interview with the composer about the piece and what he was wanting to say. I then went back and listened to the whole piece with a new appreciation.
IMO this means the piece utterly failed. Any and all art is dependent on context, of course - but that's the broad context of the world you live in, not the artificial context of the artist. If the piece depends so heavily on the artist providing the specific context to bridge the gap between the broader life-context and the special requisite knowledge to appreciate the composition, then perhaps the interview should've been included as a prelude to the piece. :P
Did you enjoy listening to the music or was your appreciation intellectual. Isn't that the test.
@@Ithirahad It does not mean that the piece failed. We all have to develop into these new styles and we mostly are not prepared. No-one is born to understand the often tricky and difficult music of contemporary composers. It only means, the listener has developed.
"Music should humbly seek to please; within these limits great beauty may perhaps be found. Extreme complication is contrary to art. Beauty must appeal to the senses, must provide us with immediate enjoyment, must impress us or insinuate itself into us without any effort on our part." - Debussy
What I find most interesting in this space is the divergence between works for solo instruments and larger ensembles. Generally speaking I'm going to at least appreciate if not actually like any work for solo instrument because they tend to keep the elements of rhythm and melody intact. When we get into larger ensembles there is a lot of experimentation purely in harmony and color which may not always work. At least that's how I see it. I think they are two very different directions sometimes.
That's what I feel about some Ferneyhough, Stockhausen or even Carter orchestral compositions. They feel like studies in noise and texture, pretty much a mess, while the chamber or piano pieces seems to follow a more dramatic, narrative approach.
Thank you for providing this insight. I understand the feeling that you allude to in the title. It's easy to have that feeling if we don't know one basic truth: we cannot observe the creation of classical music. In that moment, it is called contemporary music. The same applies to social events we experience - they will only be considered historical by future generations. The music we produce and consume today can only be considered 'classical' in the future, once it has been analyzed and contextualized as part of the historical development of music. At present, it is simply contemporary music that is part of the ongoing development of the art form. Essentially, it is created by experimenting with new sounds, and you can enjoy it only if you are part of the experiment or understand it!
I’m finding it difficult to connect to a lot of modern concert music. When I studied in the late 80s, we were still expected to produce material from the Boulezian ideology. It seemed like that academic style was eschewed for a return to tonal music in the late 90s but it appears that we’ve circled back to this quasi intellectualized concept art. The funny thing is that most new compositions I’ve heard that exploit this aren’t breaking any ground that Xenakis, Ligeti, Crumb, even as far back as Varese hadn’t already ventured into 60-80 years ago. I do however enjoy Unsuk Chin’s work. Then again, she studied under Ligeti so maybe there is something to that…
I’d very much agree with a lot of what you say - most notably your admiration of Chin! However, I would contest this sentiment with so much of the music of my colleagues and friends who follow their inspiration from Boulez, Xenakis, Scelsi, Crumb, etc. who have created music that is truly revolutionary and leaps and bounds forward than their influences’ works (which is hard to even fathom!) I would strongly recommend listening to the works of Yann Robin and Raphael Cendo as sources for these motions.
Spectralism is from the 80's and so are Feldman's most famous works.
The names of those people you mentioned will never be remembered
@@7James77 we are all going to die and be forgotten, deal with that
@@7James77 I don’t think it’s possible that they could be forgotten. They are truly a part of the canon - studied and revered by many - and every major city are performing one of these composers every night. You must not get out much
"The new kind of music seems to create not from the heart but from the head. Its composers think rather than feel. They have not the capacity to make their works exalt - they meditate, protest, analyze, reason, calculate and brood, but they do not exalt." - Sergei Rachmaninoff
Silly quote by Rachmaninoff here (a guy who shifted from composition to a career of a concert pianist btw). Composers always think about their music. Constantly. There are over 5 thousand pages of sketches that Beethoven left us. That is because he was always working and re-working ideas, and it is his thought process that allowed him to create his masterpieces. Brahms said that there is no creating without hard work, and that you need to come back to your music and rewrite it over and over again until is it a complete work of art. Making music purely through instinct or emotion is improvisation, not composition.
250 years ago there was no classical music, there was only music. Something that was never alive cant die.
so, before you were born, you didn't exist, therefore you don't and won't, wow man
it's not that the music is dying, it's the term "classical" doesn't describe what is happening now.
Then it has simply ceased to exist?
@@ronald3836 classical essentially just old stuff which is essentially "dead" already, so it basically doesn't capture what's trending now.
exactly, it would have to survive the rigors of time to be considered so
It depends on which definition you're using for "classical".
@@dylanmcdermott1110 it will be returned to for its staying quality, quite unlike the horrid noises in this video, the smarter sapien likes patterns, a deaf composer knew this well.
Classical music isn't dead
I t j u s t s m e l l s f u n n y
It wouldn't be around at all without universities propagating it.
@@Shevock Not true. People love it. That's why it's still around.
So does Jazz... "Frank Zappa"
It's pining for the fjords
There's the rub. A working definition of something passing out of cultural relevancy is the point at which you see legitimate discussion around whether it's dead or not. Everything else is really just debating the precise semantics of "dead".
Thank you for this short exploration of new music. It’s thought provoking, but I still wonder what is being accomplished in these new forms. Traditional tonal music was, and remains, popular. The great works of the classical tradition will almost certainly be performed and appreciated as long as human society exists. But I wonder if that will ever be true for most of what we call new music. Could it be that the human brain is wired in such a way that tonality will always be what becomes immortal? I don’t know, but I’m open to trying to appreciate other approaches to musical expression.
New music should just be called Entartete Kunst.
Death cultists who built hideous architecture, sculpture, paintings are doing the same horror with music unsurprisingly.
All civilisations built great art. Except XXth century West that only made universally revulsing art.
Humans are "wired" to listen to music with a tonal centre and a series of relationships between the notes that are NOT arbitrary.
Modality or tonality, it is not important, but there must be a well built structure, both in the notes and the music made with them.
One of his public lectures, Leonard Bernstein took up a 12-tone phrase from a piano piece of Schoenberg and demonstrated how it sounds tonal even though it uses all the 12 tones. More than that, he seemed to want to demonstrate how beautiful Schoenberg's music is. To me, Schoenberg's music is very romantic. Look at how ecstatic Glenn Gould is when he is playing Schoenberg. People have been fooled by Schoenberg's words advocating the equal use of the 12 tones. Despite his theorizing, his purpose was to create beautiful music.
To answer your question, the human brain is wired to SEEK tonality in sound sequences, I think. Schoenberg's, Bernstein's, and the listeners' brains did seek tonality. But, that doesn't mean that music has to include an "objective" tonality to be good. Tonality is subjective.
@@ryofurue7132 If I remember well, in Schoenberg's harmony manual "Harmonielehre", he mentions that in some Bach's work there is a 12-tone sequence in a perfectly tonal composition.
@@andsalomoni In a perfectly tonal composition, there are sections where a lot of notes that don't belong to the key appear, making the tonality ambiguous. It's possible that a short section includes all the 12 tones while still being "more or less" tonal. I think we usually call this "chromaticism" and Bach's compositions often includes such sections. Bernstein's explanation is in the opposite direction. Schoenberg's 12-tone compositions don't appear to include any tonal center, it sounds perfectly atonal, but if you listen very very carefully, you start to hear tonality . . .
I love the way you live and explain music, without any prejudge and with your mind open. Keep doing what you are doing, please.
On the consumer side of things, if I had to guess, I'd say more people probably listened to orchestral music in the past year than at any other point in history.
Pick a well-known historical composer like Mozart, Beethoven, Bach, Rachmaninoff, Tchaikovsky, etc, and I guarantee more people listened to their music last year than in their lifetimes due to distribution.
It may not be the MOST listened to music, but it is still far from dead consumption-wise. It's not the only thing feeding creativity, but if there's consumption, there will be creation.
As always, the cream will likely rise to the top over time. There are plenty of forgotten composers throughout the history of the western classical tradition who were highly successful trend setters and standard bearers during their lives but are almost completely forgotten.
You have more confidence that the future listeners are superior to the present ones than I have. I think many amazing composers have been forgotten. For now.
Sometimes, the cream stays down, in fact, the cream may not even exist, we might just be calling the topmost tea 'cream'
That approach to " modern " classical music is over 80 years old now , there is no point in calling it " avant garde " anymore
Over 80 years old, but the public still hasn't caught up, so it is avant-garde in the sense that it retains its power to shock.
@@dylanmcdermott1110 Public still don’t catch up because those sounds are instinctively unpleasant. Why do you think there is a constant vibration ratio between notes? Because there is a way that it should be.
@@dylanmcdermott1110 Power to bore and disengage.
@@dylanmcdermott1110 "Caught up"? Please take your snobbery elsewhere. This is not music. It is not human. It is inhuman, cold, and meaningless. Most people aren't so masochistic to subject themselves to such torture.
@@ronald3836 Not everyone's bored 🙂
Why does everyone call music that almost nobody enjoys "intimidating?" "Unappealing" is the appropriate word.
"You think the pizza that I made tastes terrible? Well you are just intimidated by it, you close-minded philistine."
While I agree with the point about Mozart's Don Giovanni not being whistled immediately after the performance, the issue is Don Giovanni CAN be whistled, it has a tune, a strong melody, whereas much modern classical is more focused on texture and new sound qualities etc. There is less focus on melody, which (along with rhythm) is the one thing people can take home. As good as an "experience" listening can be, to truly cement songs in popular consciousness the music needs to live in people's memories. Unfortunately the more complex and textural the music, the less it can be recalled.
This major difference is probably due to the intended audience. Don Giovanni was the popular album of its time. Modern classical is written for a learned audience familiar with the classical canon, not a lay person simply wanting entertainment.
As long as modern classical is written as part of classical music discourse and not to entertain lay people, its influence will remain squarely within its current bounds as an avant-garde legacy.
This brings me back to my music study days in college at Purdue University where our professor (G. Bradley Bodine) would play us his contemporary pieces and they just blew my mind. He also talked about festivals like there where hearing a triad was a rare thing. Thanks for the video!
My favorite part of every concert is when the orchestra tunes up.
Omg same
orquestra tuning has more order and meaning than scratching your instrument
@@AfonsoCM I'm not sure what you're trying to argue?
Varese wrote a contemporary piece that mimics the sound of a tuning orchestra
Perhaps you like the beginning of Berg's Violin Sonata? 😉
Hey Nahre -- one more point that I think gets left out of talks like this. Performing music is almost always more interesting and fulfilling than just listening. Back in college, I was in a group called "New Vocal Arts Ensemble", where we did some way-out stuff...in the mid-1970's. I found that I didn't really like listening to most of the stuff we performed, but *performing* it -- that was always interesting.
Good observation. I've also noticed that I love playing classical music, but it's not my go-to for listening. Probably because I mostly listen to music in the car or other settings with background noise, and it's hard to focus on it or pick out all the details. I usually listen in depth to classical pieces I'm trying to learn or that I'll be experiencing in an upcoming concert.
@@matthewszymanski7037 That makes sense. Idk anyone who'd listen to classical music on their way to the beach to have a good time with friends lol .. But there may be some that do, who knows lol
This is one of your best videos yet. Im pumped to listen to every song featured here. Is there any playlist from this festival available on yt? Thanks, nahre!
1:38. That’s the issue. I honestly think that good music doesn’t need to shock people. We don’t need something crazy, but rather music that is enjoyable and that grabs people’s attention not by being so outlandish and horrible sounding but rather from amazing orchestration and theme writing.
This is the best comment section I’ve seen in a while!
Thank you Nahre for opening such interesting conversations.
I wish the conservations were better; it's mostly people getting pissed off at each other. That's a reflection of the commenters, not the creator.
I just want to go on stage - one of the big concert halls - and take a dump. I've even got a title for the work: "Taking a dump", but I fear the world's still not really ready for it. I'll keep trying though. Maybe start with some smaller venues and work my way up to the top.
Yes, it’s the public that’s not ready nor caught up with your masterpiece!!
Thank you Nahre. It is one of the best videos made about classical music and us today.
For me, classical music is/was always the treasure of musical creations that resisted contemporary taste. I think it takes more than the combination of instruments and players trained in a certain method playing in a technically perfect building to bridge the time. The fact that people of today and people of other centuries enjoy the same creation makes it classical even if that music isn't on the same complex level as it is today. That doesn't mean experimental won't be classical, but it's up to the next generations to discover the classical value of the experiments we do. ( It's not about definitions. We all are able to read books or use a dictionary).
9:10 "I don't believe people were whistling the tunes of Don Giovanni in the streets of Prague the day after the premiere". Well, they probably did. Don Giovanni was a thunderous triumph in Prague. Just look at the review on the Prague Post Newspaper on November 3, 1787: "On Monday [October] 29th, the Italian opera company gave the ardently awaited opera by Maestro Mozart, Don Giovanni. Connoisseurs and musicians say that Prague has never yet heard the like. Herr Mozart conducted in person: when he entered the orchestra pit, he was received with three-fold cheers, which again happened when he left it. Everybody, on the stage and in the orchestra, strained every nerve to thank Mozart by rewarding him with a good performance. The unusually large attendance testified to unanimous approbation.”
I don't have anything against experimentation. I actually love it. It's just that I think "new" is terribly overrated. Freedom can also enslave us and keep anything from accumulating, and very good and original things can come from trying to express something in an already known common language.
It should be enough to understand the laws of musical sound, to avoid the terrible lack of meaning and mandatory disturbance in this "experimental" stuff.
In Indian classical music, they know these laws, and have been making music for some 5000 years without discontinuities, and are far from exhausting it.
Good video. Exploration of important topic. Remember that "at one time, all music was new." If it speaks something to you, it's good. Let's remain open and flexible, not closed and pre-judging. Excellent treatment of the context. Everything in the universe is dynamic, constantly moving and changing. Why is music different?
Exactly!
I’m a radio host in the National Radio Station in Bulgaria, and my topic is contemporary classical music. I wanted to say “thank you” for sharing this video, because I don’t think a lot of people know what diversity we have today (especially in a small country like mine). Most of the guest that you met are composers, that I feature and dream about meeting. Love your spectrum of curiosity, I’ve been watching your videos since doing Happy birthday in composer’s styles. Continue being an inspiring person! ❤
your thumbs up speaks volumes
I get so inspired and full of hope watching this. The major difference between "classical" music shown here and most other modern produced music - is that so many people are contributing with their emotions in a single performance. It's so powerful. There are wonderful music everywhere but there is an untapped stream of listening experience within contemporary classic music. And, oh, I so much want to visit Hamburg Elbphilhamonie!
I've tried pretty hard to listen to modern classical music and will continue to give it a chance to make friends with my ears. But it's just not what I'm interested in. I guess what I do love about it though, is that there is so much variety to classical music. That's always a good thing.
Except that in this " modern " classical field there are more gate keepers than anywhere else ... There isn't that much variety , it follows the lineage of " composers " like boulez who made a fortune being funded by tax payers money in France and Germany . Their " music " has never been popular ( for good reasons ) and is even widely mocked by most people .
@@chrisrevel2801 Should tax payer’s money support music this type of music?
@@Horatio_on_the_Beat Tax payers money shouldn't be used to make someone like pierre boulez rich , he is basically a meme to most people ( who pay taxes ) . It is always the same thing , public funds rarely go to unknown talented creator and without that system it would be harder to get the highly unpopular wrongly named " avant garde " stuff .
Contemporary "classical" music WILL lead to the death of classical music. People are simply afraid to say the truth;
Most contemporary "classical" music is awfully bad.
Four years ago, you did a video reimagining classic video game music. In light of this video taking about the state of classical music, I would love to see you cover the “rediscovery” of classical / orchestral music through video games and films. Concerts like The Final Fantasy Orchestra or Video Games Live sell out to global audiences who have found joy in seeing epic game scores performed live and accompanied by flashy and fun visuals. We’ve been to several such concerts here in the DC area (Myerhoff Symphony Hall and Strathmore Arts Center). I wish more people knew about this. I’ve always appreciated classical music and video game scores have revitalized my love of live performance. Even my wife enjoys the game score concerts and she does NOT play any video games 😂
I’m a fan of new music and appreciate you covering it.
The difference between instrumental and choral music, being text, allows choral music to continually change into a new unique form without abandoning pallatable harmonic structure. I highly recommend talking with choral conductors and composers about these differences...the voice as an instrument, i have found, can display an ocean of heart like no wind or string or other instrument can
“Art lives from constraints and dies from freedom.” Da Vinci
Simple yet very true quote ..
I think in the best mix you get 95% constraint and 5% freedom. 100% constraint still works whilst 100% freedom is just a mess.
I think the best music that will come from all of this will take the old structures of yesterday's music, and utilize the new chaos and groundbreaking sounds of today to make something even more beautiful. But who knows?
The real question is, if music is a mirror of history, what does this music say about us today?
This is a very thoughtful video, thank you! I would say, having been a music composition student, that this new "classical" music really caters toward the academic listener. The everyday person may try to listen for the novel experience, but then go back to their Beethoven or Van Halen. I compose eclectic electronic music and work in SuperCollider. I love sound experimentation. But I aim to touch the everyday person with more palatable nuances.
“Beauty in music is too often confused with something that lets the ear lie back in an easy chair. Many sounds that we are used to do not bother us, and for that reason we are inclined to call them beautiful. Frequently-possibly almost invariably-analytical and impersonal test will show that when a new or unfamiliar work is accepted as beautiful on its first hearing, its fundamental quality is one that tends to put the mind to sleep.”
-Charles Ives
Classical music (Renaissance to late Romantic) is based on acoustic properties and our anatomy and perception of sound. While there is a certain variance, there is clearly an aesthetic aspect to harmonic sounds and the interaction of these. This interaction of pitches is quite fascinating in a sense very simple and extremely complex at the same time. Everybody who tried to write something of similar quality like a Chopin Nocturne will understand what I mean. The balance between harmonic and dissonant is crucial.
@@nilsfrederking62 You know even wagner delayed the resolution as much as possible. this is just the natural evolution of music
@@prototypeinheritance515 yet it was in the boundary of tonal music. Until the Schönberg it was fine. Although he composed atonal musics, he yet maintained the structures so we could hear and follow what he composed. But contemporary music, we can’t even catch up the progress. It’s like just hearing an irritating combination of noise. You guys will say it’s just perfect depiction of natural sounds, but in fact, natural sounds are based on the constant ratio between notes and the constant vibration ratio of those notes.
@@prototypeinheritance515 It is all a question of dosis. And Wagner used consonant tonal chords, that is exactly what I spoke of. He also is very much in the tradition of tension between consonance and dissonance.
I'm sure there were tons of people asleep during Beethoven's 9th symphony premier. They must have been shocked when the rest of the audience burst into applause in the middle of the movements.
But is there an audience for this music? Personally I hear very very little that I find interesting in this very contemporary music or would ever want to listen to again and I do listen to some Webern and Berg.
Honestly, this kind of music keeps me away from orchestras nowadays. I prefer to discover beautiful music on my own terms.
To be honest, a lot of what was in this video sounds amazing and definitely makes me hear more. Sofia Gubaidulina, Lisa Streich, Rebecca Saunders and Anna Thorvaldsdóttir in particular.
@@andredelacerdasantos4439 I don't listen to woman composers, thank you
@@bernabefernandeztouceda7315 bruh what the hell 💀
It seems to me that it goes beyond music. It's like we live in an atonal society, an aperspectival society, with no home nor direction.
We have no message to convey, no beauty to evoke, nothinh sacred to devote our lives and our music to.
Just a bunch of people trying to invent new problems so they can come up with new solutions and be seen as heroes.
We need to keep it simple, we need to go to get to our tonic, we need to return home.
"Not much has really changed". Don Giovanni was a failure in Prague but a success a few months later in Vienna. And Mozart was a very popular musician in his lifetime. Things HAVE changed. For the record this festival is just a portion of what modern classical music is. Composers like Julian Anderson, Bacri, Holloway, Chin, Connesson, Muhly, Meltzer, Bates, Adès, Escaich, Hersant, Monk, Pärt, Beffa, Shaw, Lang, Tanguy and… (many others that have one foot solidly anchored in some past tradition) would NOT get invited there. In the 60's this kind of festival wouldn't have considered living composers such as Britten, Harrison, Khachaturian, Mompou or Dutilleux. This radical modernity is legit and sometimes exciting but it's just what it is, not the whole thing.
I do think that's something that people miss when it comes to talking about "oh, such and such composition was also derided in its time, we are just repeating history". I really don't think that's true.
Rite of Spring may have incited a riot during the ballet premiere but when the orchestral music was released standalone a bit later the work was called genius by almost everyone. Not to mention other Stravinsky Ballets like Petrushka and Firebird which were composed around the same time were extremely popular as well. I think people tend to "play up" the amount of drama and discord composers sowed, but in reality a lot of that drama is over exaggerated.
Even the 12 tone serialists like Schoenberg and Berg I feel like are the polar opposite of modern avant-garde music- 12 tone was all about subtlety, embracing form and structure instead of resorting to shock tactics and bombasticism.
@@aerohydra3849 Berg especially.
Great documentary and interviews! Bravo, Nahre! I don’t always like new music, but when it is expressive and touches me, I am willing to explore it more.
Thank you! You don't have to love new and experimental music nor do you have to enjoy it. But you should appreciate that it's there and that people are willing to push artistic boundaries. Like you so beautifully said, "...there's a limit to what we can understand about our current times while we are living through it..." - so much of what we consider in western art music as normative was completely experimental and not widely accepted when it was composed. Time moves on and the mainstream adapts - I hear music playing in the supermarket today that was underground and avant-garde in the 1980s.
Exactly!
The trouble with the quest for originality in art is that sooner or later you get to where the only thing left to do is produce increasingly bizarre work. Douglas Adams joked in the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy about an entire civilisation that crumbled under the weight of fashion. 'Every year the shoes were either much too large, or much too small, and occasionally even joined together at the heels'. I think new classical music has got to the 'joined together at the heels' stage.
Do you know enough examples to call for such a narrow judgement?
A line can be drawn at any point in history, why put up with the romantics, if we could stick with Bach and Vivaldi, they composed enough music for us to keep our concert halls full until the end of times (for humans)?
What’s the point of bothering with all of those composers who came after with their huuuuuuuge egos? e. g. Beethoven, Schumann, Brahms, Wagner, Mahler, Bruckner...
How does that proposition sound?
Just s as absurd as yours, truly...
I tend to agree. And free jazz has already explored bizarre sounds.
I feel many of these pieces needed more saxophones 😀
That's a good point, and sometimes it gets hard to identify what is bizarre just for the sake of being bizarre and calling for attention, or what is honestly people exploring something interesting that ends up having a certain appeal, because we are very good at rationalizing and "giving excuses".
I'm sure John cage had a great explanation for why his piece was awesome, but in the end, it's still just silence, which is great, but I prefer to enjoy it at home, on my own, for free 🤷🏻♀️
Many pieces are very disrespecful to audiences. Imagine sitting in the audience listening to people's coughs for 5 minutes and paying half a day's worth of work.
@@auricia201 I agree Auricia. I want to think that it's a genuine exploration, but to me, much of it comes across as bizarre for the sake of it.
I've just listened to a live performance of Yes' song 'Awaken' by Jon Anderson with the Todmobile Orchestra, and was left in tears of joy, as I often am by that recording. Not classical, certainly not modern classical, but I'm struck by my profound emotional reaction to it, as opposed to just being baffled and sometimes completely turned off by modern classical music.
In the end, we all have different tastes and maybe if a piece for fried artichokes in a vacuum pleases people, then it's fine. I just don't think it will save the genre from being increasingly ignored.
I don't really understand the appeal of trying to emulate what sound design is in digital music, in classical music.
Have you ever listened to Human Story 3 by James Ferraro? It's sort of related to what your saying. In that it seeks to make classical acoustic instruments sound like their digital counterparts. I think it's really beautiful stuff, but of course, maybe it would sound boring to someone else.
In 1971, Frank Zappa had The Royal Philharmonic Orchestra at his disposal for the soundtrack of 200 Motels. Many people were appalled at what The Royal Philharmonic Orchestra participate in. Compared to some of the more modern compositions, 200 Motels is downright traditional.
Zappa spoke of the snobbery of the orchestra, much like the inherent snobbery of these present day entitled avant-gardists
Hey Nahre! Great video by the way, I must say. I can relate to music as great variety then what it was more than 50 years ago where it was a great battle between traditionalists and modernists. Nowadays it feels like you can do whatever you want to be successful, there is no trends that rule or professors for that matter. For me and probably many of us composers writes music that is more or less "in between". There is not one expression that makes one composer, there are several in a single composer that can master all types of orchestration, styles, compositional techniques that can be your leading voice and that is the power underneath the abstract thinking, the emotional that gets into your brain and down into your heart. So nice to see some composers that you knew from your studies on this video!
Lots to think about…loved the point about “new doesn’t equal classical” along with the point a commenter made that many composers were famous in their day but forgotten now. Only time can make clear what new form will become classic. It feels like the music conversation is highly analogous to the art one: there has to be evolution but the work has to be somehow accessible…but not too accessible…
Thanks for the interesting video and your great channel in general. In my opinion, it’s dying (or dead, depending on your vantage point), because no one will ever put [most of] this on their Spotify playlist to enjoy except maybe some small slice of other contemporary composers, period, the end. I’m confused why no conversations about contemporary music/with composers ever tries to contend with that fact.
You are right about this
Nahre, you are the best!!! Thank you for sharing your knowledge and expertise with us. To me personally modern classical music is Joe Hisaishi. Modern experimental avant-garde stuff is very painful for me to listen to. I love music that makes me experience beautiful feelings and emotions deep inside my heart and soul. And modern crazy, wild and extreme avant-garde stuff doesn't do that for me. The feelings and emotions it makes me experience are not pleasant and beautiful, but opposite to that.
But Hisaishi's music brings tears to my eyes, melts my heart and touches my so so deeply.
Thank you for your deep and professional insight. I admire you and your channel.
Yes, Joe's music has always been an essential, defining element of Miyazaki's oeuvre for sure! 🎵🎶🎵
Working in a classical concert venue I can tell you right now that the contemporary classical composers obsessed with atonal music and showcasing it does not go down well with most audiences. Many stay at the bar or turn up to the 2nd half to hear Beethoven or Dvorak or Brahms or whatever is playing and I can't blame them.
In music universities many courses give 1 year to tonal music and then focus on atonal music. Most students can't compose a simple piece in ternary form, or are incapable of motivic development, or the skill sets saught after in the film and games industry (creating tonal music that colours scenes and environments in film, tv and video games).
Classical music suffers from the same very narrow repertoire of tonal music, and then suffers from incredibly bad atonal music that only a musicologist who sees the world through a lense of total deconstruction could enjoy. People will chat about Chopin, Ravel and Debussy for years to come, I honestly struggle to name contemporary composers that don't write semi-tonal music (David Bruce springs to mind as one of the few I like).
Thanks Nahre! I love how you approach every topic with curiosity and respect. I was definitely in the camp you described at the beginning of the video: "what more is there to experiment aren't we tired of this yet?" - but I think I'm gaining a new appreciation!
Despite the number of people praising Nahre's video and engaging with it meaningfully, there seems to also be a large group here to simply bash "contemporary-classical" music and saying essentially, "don't bother with this stuff because it doesn't make sense and it's not supposed to." This attitude misses one of the most central points of Nahre's video: contemporary-classical music can not be generalized in any way. There is a ton of music being created and so easily distributed across the world, and of any style you can imagine.
Nahre herself is a composer and her style seems to very effectively incoperate elements of the "familiar" as one commenter said modern music lacks. Post-minimalist composers certainly blend the idea of familiarity and novelty. Another point of the video is that, nothing can possibly be avant-garde, nothing can be shocking, we already did that in the 20th-century, but people are still hating on music 100 years old.
Stravinsky, Schoenberg, Shostakovich, and Poulenc were all alive at the same time in the first half of the 20th century. This is incredible proof that everything after the romantic period became personal to each composer. There is no style that is modern, no style that is unified, not one that is academic, not one that wins all competitions, not one that gets commissioned. Until we learn to recognize composers for having individual stylistic approaches to music making, a productive conversation about contemporary classical music can not be had.
Anyways, TLDR: please stop generalizing all composers these days as one group that you can throw stones at and say ruins your Baroque listening on Sunday afternoons.
You're literally generalizing it by calling it contemporary-classical. It's not classical, it's not even music. It's shit. Zero of these "composers" ZERO will ever have their name mentioned 100 years from now. None of them. Their "music" will never exist past their deaths. They will be remembered for what their sound is. Nothing. Absolutely nothing.
I think your argument here is flawed at the fundamental level. "Until we learn to recognize composers for having individual stylistic approaches to music making, a productive conversation about contemporary classical music can not be had."
I'd argue that all the composers in this video ARE CONFORMING to this performance-art-esque ostentatious subgenre of composition. It seems more radical now to compose with triads than something that sounds like cleaning your piano strings with sandpaper. I think it's an echo chamber of self validation while the outside world laughs, brushes it off, and turns on spotify to Phillip Glass or Tchaikovsky.
@@lmichaelgreenjr But you are ignoring the individual approaches of the composers in this video. The results of their music might be similarly avant garde, but they didn't get their by the same method nor does it seem to me that any of them could write one another's pieces. This video is also only including pieces chosen for a European festival, which are known in the classical music world as being the places for the most intensely modernist works. You can find so many other styles elsewhere in the world and in other scenes besides festival pieces. In my personal experience, about as many people use triads as don't in the 21st-century classical music scene.
You also mention Glass as someone the public chooses over anyone else which seems strange, as it suggests to me that minimalism is already a thing of the past, when minimalism as a technique is more modern than many of the techniques composers from this video use. John Adams grew away from the minimalist tradition in his later years, but his early pieces are quite strictly minimalist and he is still inspired by the style and he is arguably the leading living composer in the world, certainly America.
You are saying my argument doesn't exist, that there is only one style of modern music, but I assure you I didn't just say it because it sounds good and it's a total myth. I believe it and most of the living composers I listen to can easily prove their differences from one another.
@@johngalik6609exactly, avant-garde ain't a monolyth at all. Finnissy is so much different from Boulez, who's so different from Ligeti, who's so different from Xenakis, who's so different from Sorabji, who's so different from David Lang, etc. If you can't tell the difference, that's sincerely a you problem
If there is no rules, no standard, nothing to keep things organized then it’s not music. It’s sound. This stuff sounds bad, and this is the reason why this music genre is laughed at by most sensibel people.
There are no rules in the arts, but there are consequences. One of those consequences could be that you'll have to go through life without much of an audience.
No, actually, that's a hard rule: if nobody wants to listen to you, then you are not a great artist. ;-)
From most of the videos I've watched discussing modern classical music, it seems like there's an obsession with timbre and texture... while everything else falls to the side.
Although there are some interesting sounds that come out of that experimentation, it often feels unjustified, as if there was no message trying to be conveyed other than "oooh that's a cool sound ain't it"
Granted, I don't know much about classical music (let alone modern pieces) so I might be totally wrong.
You are right, this stuff is pretty much random noise, accompanied by some fake-intellectuals saying their typical fake-intellectual lines, like "you wouldn't understand it" (there is nothing to understand).
Modern classical is a postmodern disease. Those people are destroying what's left of classical western culture. Big money powers are behind this disgusting movement. Read Who paid the Piper by Saunders.
I would recommend you go to a concert hall yourself, the experience of such a piece is much different in person. Espescially when paired together with a more established piece, the contrast between modern sounds and the more conventional ones is really great imho
Yeah, I guess I should try it out sometime.
Personally I find timbre, harmony, texture and rhythm more interesting than melody.
To me there's an economic issue. I spend a lot of effort getting to and from a concert and the cost of tickets is at the edge of my budget. I am NOT going to attend a concert where for half the time my aural sensibilities are assaulted by what is often times a cacophony. The result is that I fall back on recordings and and performers become less supported. I am certain I am not alone in this situation.
When people finally get over this crap they will be forced to play actual music again.
I thought this might have been about beginning music students not being taught enough classical music. This is more of a beautiful description of the evolution of "high brow" music. Luciano Berio and George Crumb come to mind as those ahead of their time. Reports of audience reactions are fun.
People have been sounding the death knell of classical music for decades. (Norman Lebrecht made a career out of it.) It's nothing to worry about. It's still around, still being created, performed, recorded, and loved. And with classical music's uniquely strong--indeed, almost all-consuming and defining--obsession with its past and its canon, it's normal that there will be friction and misunderstanding (or antipathy) when it comes to current experimental classical music.
And if someone comes to classical music via Mozart or Tchaikovsky and finds joy in those styles and sound-worlds, it's no surprise--and no problem--if they don't get (or want to get) a contemporary avant-garde piece.
Anyone who has seen the 3:30AM line at Carnegie Hall just get a rush ticket to hear Yuja Wang's Rachmaninoff Marathon, you know that classical music is nor dying, it is very much alive and thriving.
There's a fraud.
What they want to see is her prancing around in lingerie without any underwear.
Talent-wise - she's a little better than your best local piano teacher.
For playing yes but new compositions are really very bad, anti musical, cold, theoretical and remarkably less interesting than jazz and even some pop rock.
5% ground breaking innovation.
95% catastrophe.
@TW GER not even 1. All i see is wannabees
Number Six: Other than a few avant garde musicians it is despised. We shudder whenever the conductor must "explain" the next piece. It's not that some of these works are not dazzling or challenging - it's that no one likes them. It may be a case of natural evolution for the "new". I've migrated from Mozart, Bach, Beethoven, Chopin, Brahms, Rachmaninoff to Scriabin, Szymanowski, Berg and several minor composers. Searching for newness.
Another problem - they can't be remembered. On vacations we'd sing the Beatles, church songs, old musicals or even intone a Bach fugue (musical family). But who will ever (want to) reproduce the examples here? Oddness for the sake of oddity. Not just switching locations or having performers do silly things or one long note or silence. Liszt's controversial " triangle" in his concerto cannot compare to plane engines, traffic or unintelligible screaming heard today.
this was a very amazing video to watch and has really made me realize that yes we are in the current contemporary era.
i find myself often thinking what it would be like if i could go back in time and experience Tchaikovsky's First violin concerto during its debut.
of course, its valid for me to think that because like, if you have heard that concerto, then 9 times out of 10 you'd agree that its one of the best ever written but something greater than that could be coming out now in our era.
so, to everyone who loves music lets continue support this modern composer so that one day they may be the new tchaikovsky, liszt, paganini, beethoven, mozart, wienawski, shotakovich, prokofiev.
The interest in that type of music seems to be miniscule (I would have loved some data on that) and it can only be realised due to major subsidies from government as it seems to me. Additionally this seems to be especially true for european contemporary music and less so for american. I would've wished for a more critical view on that aspect.
Glad to see I'm not the only one concluding that this is government subsidies at work.
@@ronald3836 right back at you! I think it is also important to notice, that subsidies for culture are not generally wrong and bad completely (although should always be scrutinized) but the imbalance here between relevance and financing from government is just mind boggling and frankly wrong.
A lot of these composers seem to be scared of being seen as "populist" in the eyes of their colleagues, they are scared of writing something that may be appealing to a "layman". They need to get rid of that fear somehow, then modern concert music may have a future.
Not all music can be pop.
@@SelectCircle i know. That's why I put "populist" in quotes
@@garrysmodsketches So "pop" would be more accessible and less challenging without being outright pop. ... I would NOT want to be given that assignment! : D
@@SelectCircle i think composers should strive to reach a golden mean between the two extremes: accessibility and complexity. It is an extremely difficult task, but great masters succeeded in achieving this balance. Their music is appealing for average people, but it is also complex and rich and full of ideas and is interesting to profession musicians, "connoisseurs". Bach's music would be one example of such balance. Again, to write such music is extremely difficult, it takes a lot of craft and work. But I think it's worth the effort.
@@garrysmodsketches I was with you until you brought up the eternally overrated Bach.
As a new composer, I write stuff that sounds cool to me. For me, I think making music that is pleasing and interesting is one of my biggest goals. While there's a lot of merit in the avant-garde style pieces, I kind of don't find writing in that sort of way being appealing. But the cool thing about those experimental pieces is that while a lot of it may not land, some of the techniques can be used for future music in different contexts. Contemporary musical techniques are can have really cool effects and the way that they are used is what can make one new composition different from your favorite one to an average one.
I work as a songwriter, but I have a friend that lectures in composition in the UK. My issue with some modern music is that while it may be art, to me it's not music. For me, to be music it should contain some form of melody, harmony, and rhythm. Art can use sound as a device to make a statement and convey a point, but it can't really be classed as music without those things.
As others have mentioned, any breaking of convention should have a rationale behind it other than just breaking convention. One can intellectually rationalise almost anything, but that doesn't mean one should.
This was such a thoughtful and insightful video. Thank you for exposing me to the works of current composers. I am in a kind of limbo when it comes to new "classical" music (apart from your compositions, of course). More of this would be very helpful. I could also see (as the third clarinet of the third clarinets) how terrifying it could be to try to perform this music. On the other hand, I like experimenting with sounds myself, so I can see how it could be satisfying to be part of a group doing this.
There is plenty of "the emperor has no clothes" music going on in the new music world and it deserves its utter irrelevance. Eric Whitacre is a great example of a living composer who balances elements of the approachable and the innovative
Caroline Shaw as well, a lot of her stuff is very tonal but she sprinkles in very innovative and interesting techniques and colors that make it really new and fresh
@@watson498 yeah! You gotta have at least a foot in familiar territory
Wholeheartedly agree. I’m a violinist and next week will be working with one of the composers interviewed for this video. I find it hard to believe that anyone really wants to hear the performance.
I agree, as much as it pains me. The thought of entering the world of classical composers when my time at university is finished is incredibly daunting---because of how "old-fashioned" and "tonal" my music is (I write in a hybrid Impressionist-Jazz-Baroque-film style), I fear that I will be rejected by my contemporaries. How do I confront that?
@@andrewfortmusic homie, be accountable to audiences not eggheaded academics hooting and hollering over orchestras like twats. Impressionist/baroque jazz sounds great to me, you've got your foot in 3 already time-tested familiar genres there
Composers are killing classical music by writing stuff nobody wants to listen to.
Here in Sweden composers get works commissioned from state funded orchestras to be played one time and never again. That's just artificial life support.
Other art forms generally left the experimentation after the 60s and went back to (slightly altered) consonance. Classical music never did. That's why people aren't consuming classical music anymore, as the are say literature. You DO need references. There's no way you can understand and enjoy something if it all is new and strange to you.
Sure you can.
I mean, I write for the most part as though I am living in Germany or Austria-Hungary circa 1900. I have nothing to do with the contemporary "scene".
I've been a choral performer in the LA Phil's Green Umbrella concerts, and have seen audiences embrace or utterly reject "bleeding edge" music. "Survivor bias" will determine, in a century, what people think of classical music in the early 21st century; the rest will be left for 22nd century musicologists to mull over.
Thanks for featuring Eric Whitacre near the end - love his stuff!
You may also enjoy music by Jasper Randall as performed by Los Robles Master Chorale:
ruclips.net/user/results?search_query=lrmasterchorale+randall
Such a beautiful essay, about today and yesterday and tomorrow. Thank you.
I personally don’t see these examples as classical music, more like experimental music using classical instruments, I do after they are more like “genre-less”, but 99% of all produced music won’t be master pieces anyways. I do hope they can find the new “rules” that allows them to make music that we can enjoy like how we enjoy Mozart, Rachmaninov, or BB king.
I respectfully disagree with almost every word I just heard. The reason that so much modern music (avant-garde, or call it what you will) is so difficult (actually, unpleasant) is precisely because it has abandoned so many of the rules that allow an ordinary, non-specialist person to understand and enjoy what they are listening to.
One of the contributors said that what I have just outlined allows composers to explore new ways of expressing themselves. While that may be true, it is problematic for at least two reasons.
1) The Abolition of so many tried and tested conventions has made a great deal of music (which is organised sound) indistinguishable from noise (which is not). See 'Voice Leading: The Science Behind A Musical Art' by David Huron for a detailed and fascinating discussion of the difference.
2) Each and every piece that I, for example, have ever written and am currently writing uses functional tonal harmony, and yet each and every one of them is a new way of expressing myself: none of my pieces have ever been written by anyone else, or me, before. They are (despite their Neopolitan chords and viio7/V's and what have you) completely original. To tear the language apart would like be what doing I have in this sentence, simply sake for of it.
In any case, if someone were to hear one of my pieces in, say, 200 years' time would it matter to them whether it had been written in 2024, 1924 or 1724? I think not. That is something which is completely missed by 'modern' composers: they, almost to the last man and woman, seem to be obsessed with the 'now'. That, in my view, takes precedence over their music, or, more specifically, its place in the canon.
The difference between their music and, say, Strivinsky's Rite or Messian's Turangalilia is that the latter two understood that tension and release (be it harmonic, textural or some other aspect of the music) is dependent on the familiar in order for those two aspects of the music to have any meaningful effect.
It is the most basic lesson that you learn when writing second species counterpoint, albeit on a much grander scale: you can't have the light without the dark. So much of modern music just sounds like the latter.
Amazing video!! It helped me as an outsider appreciate the medium much more
Beautiful! Thank you Nahre for this fantastic and comprehensive guide to contemporary music!
This is a very good video Nahre! Very nice to know what is happening on those fronts - which I didn't know about before, until seeing this video!
I've been attending a classical music composing class for a few years now, fascinating how notions from the baroque and romantic eras explain and refines all the jazz stuff I've been playing for years. Now, it didn't make me listen to classical music either, the absence of swing and groove makes me lose interest very quickly.
We have enjoyed your videos over the past year or so and have learned a lot about the music you have discussed. On this matter, however, we disagree. The majority of what we have been subjected to seems to be a mix in varying proportions of The Emperor's New Clothes and The Royal Nonesuch (Huckleberry Finn).
i think its sad classical musicians think they need to go to weird atonal "shock-value" elements to make something original and of quality. theres still so much to study in brasilian music, blues, jazz harmony, new electronic music, that you can try to reinvent genres by combinations that are viable. it seems pretentious to ignore these disciplines and go to weird shocking places.. i just dont relate to it at all.
You're overgeneralizing. I've also yet to hear of a single great composer who did anything for just shock value.
I'm a composer :
I have no score anymore, only pieces title, and every time they're played all is improvised.
It's for 2 to 100 people, with instruments : you don't even have to know how to play them.
You can choose any instrument you want, and it doesn't have to be something known : improvise your instrument.
You can play or not.
Welcome to the 21st Century Classical world.
That's not composing
@@garrysmodsketches If 4.33 of silence is composing, so are pieces titles which are improvised everytime they're played.
@@myklkay 4.33 is just a meme, not a musical composition. Improvisation is not composition because improvisation happens in the moment, while composition takes time and involves planning.
@@garrysmodsketches So the fact that many pieces are born from improvisation render them not valid because it should take time and planning ?
I feel sorry for many jazz composers too...
@@myklkay what? No. For example, Autumn leaves is a composition that is pre-written. However, improvising over autumn leaves would not be composing because you play melodies in the moment when you improvise. An improvised piece is valid, but we are talking about the process of creating music, not the end result. Composition and improvisation are fundamentally different.
What an interesting video and I love that you touch on the 'breaking of rules' and I used to feel that when new eras of music emerges it's often in rebellion to a previous era. It will be interesting to see where music takes us next.
Exactly!
This was a wonderful, thoughtful, video. It is okay not to understand and it is okay not to like things. Just be open to the possibilities.
Big difference, classical music used to be popular, and most people enjoyed it. Same thing doesn't apply here, not even close.