Richard Todd [[log in to unmask]] comment to Mr. Newberry's post:
>>Classical music is not dying.
Classical music has entered a road that can lead to that Classical Music
will die, and I don't know if the most tragic thing in the circumstance is
that classical music is being killed or that it is being killed (in part)
by people who belive that they are saving classical music from dying.
Stirling Newberry [[log in to unmask]] wrote an interesting post, and
for once (what I used to avoid) I want to reply to Mr. newberry on this
issue:
Stirling wrote:
>If one needs one of many exhibits as to why classical music is dying, then
>the insular - indeed clubbish - nature of many of its institutions is at
>the heart of the problem. Musicians complain about closed methods for
>choosing conductors, critics complain that conductors are not local, and
>thus have no roots, orchestra boards complain about the musicians union.
And the main reason to this is that that classical society is so small.
When it grows this will no longer be a problem. What is mentioned in the
quote above is not why classical music is in crisis, but a result of it.
It was not a major problem in Beethovens time of course, but that has to do
with the fact that the society looked different then from now. The problem
existed though also in Beethovens time, but was not major - it exists
today, it is bigger, but not a major reason to classical musics crisis.
>One might be tempted to call it a conspiracy, but it isn't - it is
>many thousand small conspiracies, each one run by people who, when given
>a choice between doing the ethical thing, and doing that which makes
>their life, job and existence easier in the short term, have no trouble
>justifying doing what makes their life easier. And they lean on someone
>else. That someone else has a choice - suffer in silence, or lean on the
>next person down the chain. The music director programs an awful work by
>a close friend, the critic pans it harder than perhaps it deserves, the
>reader of the newspaper complains to his friends.
Also this I doubt is a major reason to why classical music is dying. It
is a negative development that can exist, and does exist in many places.
Nothing unique for classical musics society/etablishment/industry, but in
many places. To complain about it is fruitless, but it interestingly tend
to appear more often in a house that is rotten and the air stinks of
rotting. An unclear soft smell is enough.
>The field of music theory is one where social wars are re-fought.
>Long after the participants are dead, there are those who are trying to
>understand the participants. This means, like old men playing war games,
>they must soak themselves in ideas and strategies of discourse which are
>long dead.
I doubt it is so: it is fights going on today which have been fought by
homo sapiens ever since she walked on two legs. There have always been
"transparent" fights in society - in one time workers againt noblemens - in
another time hansebund against Italy - in another aryans aginst semits - in
many times female vs male influence - or pick your favourite fight for
power, ideological, racial, economical....These wars are mostly fought, not
with cannons, but "invisible", with masked arguments and intentions. This
is mans interaction in and between those groups she belongs to. Man is an
animal that lives in crowds and therefore she wants to interact.
>Pick up a music theory work, and chances are it falls into one of three
>categories. One large category might be called the mechanical view -
>descended from new criticism, and steeped in the pseudo-mathematicism and
>scientificism of the 20th century, it pretends that one can deal with music
>as pitch classes and diagrams.
Thats the road that was first clearly visible in Schoenberg, and which
still is the most striving and powermongering "idea".
>Another large category might be called the post modern school - which is
>composed of trying to second guess the composer's cultural milieu and
>outlook.
Please allow me, with limited knowledge of this language, to ask the autor
to elaborate on the description.
>A third category might be called the cultural critic view - which emulates
>the old model of the critic mediating between a lay public and a musical
>priesthood, telling us as to what Shostakovich was really saying when he
>wrote this or that note.
Why does all work fall into these categories?
>All of these categories are obsolete and destructive to the real nature of
>music theory. And what is that nature? And what gives me the right to tell
>and entire field of well paid farts where to get off.
>
>Second question first. The second question is answered by the sheer
>uselessness of their production - what have they written which is worth
>reading. The answer is that the only musicology people care about is that
>which is used to reconstruct unfinished works - in other words mimetic
>study.
That is also a derivate of the scientific approach of 20th century. All
people have the right to say. If only the one who knows how to construct
music best shall be able to tell, only (say) Beethoven should be allowed to
say.
>However, the telescope for the mind has been invented. Like Galileo's
>Early model, all it has really done is teach us to tear up our old views
>of cognition and throw them out. However, like the catholic church in
>the late renaissance, our present society has a vested interest in the old
>view of thinking about thinking, and hence is busy burning heretics at the
>stake. Eventually enough non-threatening people will believe the evidence
>presented to them, and the system will change. But there are a great many
>marshmallow roasts between here and there.
It is interesting to note that the idea that is fighting stongest and
has won most instep is actually the most scientific-experimental. This
idea wants to conquer, and it is conquering already. Of course it is a
question of different wiews of the world, alternative wiews. Today people
with schizophrenia many times feel very bad, because of their way of
"percieving" the world. Still this wiew is not a negative in any objective
way. The reason to that they feel bad is that they are few, and the
non-schizophrenic people set the rules for society. If a majority of
people had the schizophrenic approach, possibly those who now are - excuse
me - sane, would feel bad. Possibly, not necessarily, but thats another
discussion.
What decides what is right? Is everything possible? If Lutoslawski let
chance decide his music to part to a music which he cannot actuelly know
how it will sound, is that as "right" as Mozarts sweet joy or sweet lament,
cleary intented? A usual arguement is that there is nothing objective in
art. That is a fundamental error, as we can't know that. Of course we
"choose what we want" but what decides what we want? When it comes to me I
doubt strongly that Jean Barraque actually feels what he writes, while I
don't doubt Mozart, beethoven, Bach, Wagner....at least wanted to express
something that can be defined in people as a "common recognizable
abstract". For example if I ask you "who is Mats Norrman", you will
probably think of me. Tomorrow you will also think of me - same me.
If I go and change my hair to another couffiere you will also think of me
- same me. The point is that there is something that people agree about
-always! This is built into the genes. Threr are also things that we
disagree about: we would probably not disagree what major chords and minor
chords are, or what blue or red is, or cold or warm, and thats because we
have the same physical conditions to agree on this. We disagree on other
things, for example if Mozart is greater composer than Beethoven or if
Monet is better than Picasso. This stems from cultural differences,
which also influence us and are part of our personality. And cultural
differences are the "upsized" actually small differences in genetics we
bear. But there is things that we agree about, and that is important.
If we can compose music that is completely different from everything else,
if everything can be art, we also say that we agree about nothing. And
therefore it is important to be critical to those who compose music that
can "be anything". Personally I doubt that those who compose this music
want to go to the extreme consequence of their standpoint and fuck a horse,
or a parrot, or an insect. Modernists belive that they mark affinity with
everything when allowing eveything, yet in a scientific shape, but they are
only douing so audielly, not socially.
Why can everything be composed? Are those who support modern music
intriguing destroyers with malicious intents? My answer would be, that they
destroy something, but still the intents can be good. I think many have
good intents, and think most of people have good intents, but I think this
fraction is wrong.
Modernist music can be everything. Mozart is to sweet, Alfven is to
childish, because they followed a tradition. Experimantal modernist
composers - many of them have belonged to the avantgarde - argue that this
tonal sea, in which Mozart, beethoven, Wagner, Bach, Palestrina and the
traditionalists were fishing pearls, of course they have found beautiful
pearls, but there mistake is to fix on this sea. If we never take trips
faraway on chance, like columbus searching for America, we will never find
what hides in the faraways seas. Perhaps it is possible to find even more
beautiful perls there, and if that can be done it is worth it is some
experimentators get shipwrecked on those trips.
A great though of course. Under the praemisse that music can build upon
anything else than the combination of irrationality and form, which it has
done as long as man has lived.
It is tempting for those who wants top learn composition of course:
"Everything is possible", "Break all rules", "You can do what you want".
Easy road. The powerpeople don't understand the composers music, because
nobody does, but they have another goal - an undefined goal - with
supporting it, and therefore modernist music can be accepted by many
enough to push classical music downgraves.
I say, it is not wrong to experiment, find new ways, search, but this can
neither let be done in a scale and with a brutality that sets the art on
game. Of course I also want to find a pearl that is even more beautiful
than those I already know. What I am arguing against is just that the
main value in modernist music is a scientific approach. You can listen to
Mozart on a very advanced level, you can listen to Stockhausen to a very
advanced level. But you can also listen to Mozart on a very "easy" level,
and here shows the difference in approach. Most of people would agree with
me (not modernist fans, but the man in the street), that Mozart is easier
than Stockhausen. But skilled musicians would puck their brows if Mozart
on the deep sind is deeper than Stockhausen or not. BUT, Mozart gave all
people the chance to enjoy his music, intellectuals and non-musicians and
just anybody. Stockhausen didn't give all people a chance to enjoy his
music, at least not with characteristica that is easily reconizable. And
therefore Mozart marked and whised his music for everybody - Stockhausen
only spoke to an elit (intellectually or "deep" is implied). That is what
"Wissenschaftliche Klaenge" means.
>The easiest to dispose of is the theory of "music is a language". Perhaps
>in some metaphorical sense, but not in the actual sense. The mechanisms of
>language - grammar formation, noun selection, phoneme translation - are not
>active when listening to music. Any notion that music has a generative
>grammar that is the same as languages is simply incorrect. This does not
>mean we cannot make analogies to grammar - as we do with computer languages
>or even physical processes such as the codification of genetic material
>with letters of DNA - but they are analogies only.
I think of the leitmotifs in Niebelungens Ring. The "Ring-motif" for
example, makes me giggle. How can a ring be described with notes? Of
course now the Ringmotif is constructed by - I think - the fatemotiv and
urmotiv, so it fills a fuction and is "right" as it is, but without the
other musical references that are here, Wagner had got difficulties. All
things cannot be described and expressed in music, but some can. In fact.
>So what is left?
>
>It might surprise people, but we still, every day, rely on the same ideas
>of the solar system that the ancients used.
Music still conscists of the same elements as it did long back in
prehistoric time.
>This field will, of course, be ever expanding as new working methods are
>created.
Sure. Listen to Pfitzner. His music is not like Schonebergs, or Wagner,
or Strauss, or Mahler, or whom you want. He used a highromantic idiom,
which was also Wagners, but his music inholds his indivudual expression.
It is possible, for those who wants to do that to mark the connection
clearly to the tradition and still find space to express their own
personality - because more we cannot express that what we are ourselves -
and the tonal language, the tradition gives us much more than well the
chance to do this: there are more potential great melodies than there are
stars in universe!
.....
>The distillation of all the possible musics into the one that is
>one person's mind, and the ability to create regularly mean that there will
>always be a method to the madness, and there will always be a need to
>distill that method to recognisable steps.
....The tradition will of course also chance, as it is in small steps
expanded - but dangerous things can happen when one wants to take too
big steps. Of course we perhaps only need to send out 10 boats and 9 have
shipwreck, 1 finds a place for much beautiful pearls. But we can send out
all our boats, on long journeys. Our fishing water will expand, but we need
time to do that. We will find pearls, but it will take time. And it must
take time.
>But what of the true nature of music - does it consist of some metaphysical
>project to ennoble or enlighten? No. It consists of the task of being
>musical, and understanding that, which because it is always, in Aristotle's
>way of saying things - coming to be and passing away - cannot be fixed in
>any pure word form.
Aristoteles saw many things this already he, still the modernists claim
affinity with him.
>As one scholar put it "I study the middle ages, I don't want to live
>there."
I also don't want to live in the middle ages, but please allow me to go on
from the part that ended with Stockhausen "Wissenschaftliche Klaenge":
The tonal musicians marked fellowship with and compassion for all people,
the modernists only mark affinity with an elite - for so I interpret the
scientific approach, uninteresting of what other social demands it stems
from. Of course the man will change gradually, like different spieces
always has developed and changed, but I think all people together are
needed to make the fuel for human to develop as rich as possible, not just
intellectuals, or blueeyes, or longfingers, or those who like gorgonzola
cheese, and therefore it is the arts duty and function to mark fellowship
to all people, not just a few of them, whether who those are. Man will
change, art will change, but gradually, not with big jumps. To holocaust
people was an attempt to take big jumps, to allow everything to be music
is a different attempt to take big jumps. There are always those who
experimente, but all people cannot do just that all the time, because
that will set arts survival on game, and also our own survival. Man will
change, art will change, but gradually, and we need the traditions to allow
ourself to change in good pace, slow, secure....we cannot predict the
future, but we can give ourselves so good chances as possible to meet it.
Mats Norrman
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