Classical Music R.I.P.

Good stuff folks!

Look I has nothing to declare. Why is you pickin' on me? Is it cos I is a yoof and listens to art music?

Ok in my flight bag I have; Gorecki, Tippett, Lutoslawski, Penderecki, Part, Knussen, Hugh Wood and loads of others. This one is legal; it's called Never mind the Boulez here's Pierre. Me has borrowed that from Arbutus.

I'm not sure I can do a list Uber. Mussessein your list looks interesting. You rate Penderecki 7 and 8? I know only the first four, but very interesting indeed.

Really there are so many composers to explore...

Mark

Beyond the fun so far, I think that Uber Alice has made some point, indeed.

So far, the works mentioned are some sort of above or around mediocrity or average compositions compared to the 15 Symphonies & 15 String Quarterts  as well as a good deal of great Instrumental and Chamber Music works by Shostakovich. Prokofiev, Stravinsky, Bartok, R. Strauss, Britten and quite a few others wrote a good number of monumental, influential, extremely interesting and quite fascinating works, in every field (wonderful and audaciously original and inspired ballets, great vocal works, splendid and memorable Operas, spectacular and breathtaking Symphonic & Orchestral works, etc.).

Where the "Popel Vuh" and Ginastera himself can stand? Who knows (and truly cares for) "Pro et Contra" and Gubaidulina herself? As for Beamish, Matthews or Maxwell Davies, can they stand with any really memorable or influential composition? And how many do really care for or even know them and their production outside UK?

So, maybe it's not the "end of the world" after 1975, nor the end of Classical Music, but contemplate the idea that maybe, after Aug. 1975, we enter the era of all types of "mediocrity" (lower the bar, deal with the incomprehensible: you don't have to follow or understand anything; just enjoy the...sonorities, the colours; forget the design, the form, the structure, the fine melodies, solid orchestrations...).

To sum up: despite there are quite a few examples of works of some kind of genuine interest, after Aug. 1975, we have not seen any Symphony even close to Shostakovich, Prokofiev or R. Strauss, a String Quartet of the calibre of any of Shostakovich or Bartok (or even Ravel and Faure) and so on. The bar is lowered and along with that our mindset is being compromised.

However, I won't say never again. We can always hope. Who knows?..

Parla

"It sounds like 'Opera in Venice after Monteverdi'."

A brilliant observation!

Chris

Uber - hope you like the Part CD. Let me know what you think!

Mark

CW, your reply answers the second question of mine and partially. However, the critical one is the first. Can they stand with any memorable or influential composition? I have quite a few CDs of all of these three and I do not and cannot find anything of this sort.

By the way the "original post" asked about works, not composers.

Parla

Mark --

I didn't have any particular hierarchy in mind -- my list was vaguely chronological, if anything. Sorry if I caused any confusion.

Parla, I would not hold any items on my list to the "Beethoven or above" standard. But I found genuine pleasure and musical insight in each of the works listed. Beyond that, I make no claims.

Enjoy!

A late response to this thread, but I've recently been listening again to some Rubbra symphonies, and the last two (10 & 11) I think would technically count as post-mortem-Shostakovich. More importantly, they connect with an earlier sequence much of which I think is excellent.

In particular, I'm really taken at the moment with the 6th Symphony (1954) - the very fine BBC NOW/Hickox recording on Chandos and perhaps the even better (more robust, seemingly more-at-home-with-the-score, if marginally less glamorously polished) Philharmonia/Del Mar recording on Lyrita. Rubbra's 9th is also a great score, openly paying hommage to Bach, and composed in 1972.

I think Alice has got a rough point about a generation of music: not necessarily a generation of music-makers (who may have been born some time before the 1970s), so much as an approach to musical communication and values deemed fashionable since then. I guess it's an argument we've been having for a good century - century and a half - since we as listeners (for various reasons: education, the economics of the concert hall then recorded sound, etc) became critics and arbiters of quality. This forum is vivid testimony to it. The stuff we don't like we consider upstart trash. Much of it no doubt is. The abiding question is where we draw the line, and whether we're right.

That question rumbles on...............

Still, I'm happy to commit to saying that I thoroughly like a tune or two, and what sounds to my layman's ears like craftsmanship. I want music to challenge me but also to engage me, and encourage me to take some sort of intellectual and emotional journey. Rubbra's 6th, to cite an example, does that.

Most music by composers writing today doesn't do that. It's either too simple or incomprehensible. (Hoping there that I'm not paraphrasing some Viennese critic on Mahler's 6th at the time of its first performance, though I probably am.)