Chris Beckwith, re "alarm clock" music:

>>Truth be told, the issue for me isn't the ound - but the utterly
>>predictable sense of exhaustion about the music itself.  Putting it
>>bluntly - the moment of high modernism that Shoenberg &co are emblematic
>>of is over - and has been for some time.

This would be my opinion too, but for the mention of Schoenberg.  I can't
hear any similarity between late-romantic music such as Schoenberg's String
Trio and the tiresome (IMO) output of the indistinguishable (to me) high
moderns of two decades later.

>>Works in the present that perpetuate the form are little more than a
>>sterile, academic exercise that better reflect the conservatories that
>>incubate them.  Much of it is derivative ... <snip> ...
>>And the fact is: alot of it just ain't news.

Steve Schwartz:

>But this is true of any style.  In that sense, style is neutral.

But what about music which is written specifically to shock the audience?
Once it stops being shocking, it loses its point.

>What really, really bothers me is the tendency on both sides of the
>"Modern Music Question" to make a special case for or against the 20th
>century or Schoenberg or whoever happens to be your own messiah or devil
>of the moment on grand cultural grounds.  We don't make this kind of
>evaluation for any other period, and I've yet to understand why people
>are so eager to argue in this way about music of their own time.

Perhaps it's because the extra-musical associations of pre-20th-century
music aren't important any more.  It doesn't really matter whether
Beethoven was pro-Napoleon or anti-Napoleon, or whether Byrd and Tallis
would have supported a Spanish invasion.

Or perhaps it's that by shouting loud enough we might still influence
living composers.

>>That I can tick off on but one hand the number of well-known, present
>>-day living composers is, in my opinion, an appalling state of affairs.
>>...  In fact, this paucity of public attention, to a degree, is
>>attributable to nothing less than the hidebound, reclusive sway of a
>>rutted, proto - modernist / Frankfurt School sensibility that has become
>>respectably enmeshed in the academic music culture.  Its grip has withered
>>music.
>
>Bushwa.  Aside from the fact that academia presently hosts all kinds of
>styles - from atonalists/serialists to minimalists to neo-Romantics to
>whatever -

That seems to be true enough of the US, but it might not be the case
everywhere.  Chris's description rings true for the UK, for example.

>- very few people listen to the music you happen to like.  How
>do you account for this?

I don't know. It's odd, isn't it?

>Have those mean old Atonalists ruined it for Beethoven and Brahms and
>the rest (or substitute your favorite composers here)? If so, why do
>you personally like them? Are you more perceptive? Have you had certain
>advantages? Are you merely luckier? It seems to me hat someone with your
>position must come up with the explanation of why classical music in
>general is ignored, and furthermore ignored by the so-called "educated
>classes."

OTOH, it seems to me that no-one needs to explain why he or she likes
Beethoven, Brahms and the rest.  It's up to the people who ignore it to
explain why.

>You're also not going to find many "hard-core" figures in other arts
>showing up in the conversation of our general educated classes.  ...

As I said, it's up to the people who ignore it to explain why, and in
literature I'm on the side of the philistines, so I'll try:

I try to avoid "Literature" (I much prefer reading a good book <g>) but
occasionally I fail.  The Literature I've encountered seems to have two
main things in common: it's set twenty or thirty years in the past, and
the main character is always a writer.  There are no real people in it
("real people" being people I meet every day, such as chess-players or
software or electronics engineers) and there's nothing in it I can relate
to.  Is there a single work of Literature where the central character is a
software engineer?

My impression is that modern literature is written by writers for other
writers to read.  I suspect that there's also quite a lot of modern music
written by musicians for other musicians to listen to (I find this more
true of jazz than CM, BTW), and that this is the "academic music" which
Chris Beckwith dislikes.  I know that there's also quite a lot of modern
music which anyone can appreciate - perhaps it is just a matter of luck
that I come across this while others come across the incestuous stuff.

Peter Varley
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