Serial music you can relax to?
Sat, Feb 2 2013, 1:05AM
#2
RE: Serial music you relax to? RE: Serial music you relax to?
I take your point. But all that Greenberg (and the modernist tradition which he kicked off) was rejecting was kitsch, not renouncing any form of art in favour of any other. It seems to me that what he was doing in Avant Garde and Kitsch was trying to explain in cultural/historical terms why there was a sudden explosion of abstract art at a particular point in time. And, crucially, to explain that abstract expressionism was a continuation of art practices from Ingres and Delacroix, rather than a rejection of them. Nowhere did he say that everything that wasn’t abstract expressionism was inferior or lacking in value.
Yes, in fact he did. From The Avant-Garde and Kitsch: "All kitsch is academic, and conversely, all that is academic is kitsch."
As we are now in the 21st century, it’s difficult to argue that was took place in the 20th century was an ‘ultimate conclusion’ of anything. People are still producing art and music today.
Of course people are still making art and music. I'm not claiming that art or music have reached their endpoint. What has reached its ultimate conclusion, pretty much from the cold war onward, is modernism's teleological view of history. We're in what you might call the post-modern era, if it were not such a misused, illdefined term. At any rate, the Big Stories, to borrow a term from Lyotard, are over, both in politics and in art. It's very unlikely that nowadays a composer will publish anything like this: 'It is not deviltry, but only the most ordinary common sense which makes me say that, since the discoveries made by the Viennese, all composition other than twelve-tone is useless.' (Boulez - Schoenberg is dead). In fact, tonality as well as styles from the past are being embraced again by lots of contemporary composers.
Brumas
I can see your point and up to a point I might agree with it, except that when I read the words of artists like Boulez, particularly when they were younger, I am left with the impression that in part all of this was (as with every generation) an attempt to negate the past to make way for their version of the new (or as they might put it... modern). Some might term it hubris or iconaclasm or just the need to metaphorically 'murder your father'. What do you think?
I have been ready this thread with much interest - I cannot claim to have the breadth of knowledge regarding cultural thinking or theories that others have but it is illuminating and thought provoking. For the little that it is worth I believe there is serial music that stands the test of time and rewards listening. For me it is a little like the time I spent at the Rothko Chapel - you have to really listen without prejudice and if you are willing to put the effort in there are plenty of rewards. I would also add that of all the music I know it is the more 'modern', 'avante-garde' (or whatever term one wishes to use) that rewards live listening. I find that music by composers such as Boulez, Cage, Nono and Michael Gordon has an intensely visceral element that cannot be reproduced in the home...
Sat, Feb 2 2013, 12:10PM
#3
RE: Serial music you can relax to?
Guillaume shot the dice. Can anyone sing a single bar from serial music after the first listening. Can anyone remember (in detail) even a tiny piece of serial music compositions?
"Memorability counts". So, try to whistle "Le marteau sans maitre" easily and with precision, so that Monsieur Boulez can be happy and...justified...
Parla
Mon, Feb 4 2013, 1:08AM
#4
RE:
Mondrian’s theories might seem hair brained to us, but there’s no basis to suggest he had any sympathies with fascism (he left Europe in the 1930’s precisely to avoid the Nazis). He was a follower of theosophy (as were Kandinsky and Klee), which is essentially spiritual and had no political dimension.
Nor is it right to say that there was a general link between modernism and fascism. Constructivism, surrealism, Dadaism if anything were strongly inspired by socialism and Marxism and the need to find an alternative to nationalism. The other modernist movements, fauvism and cubism, had no political dimension whatsoever (Matisse lived through two world wars, but you would never guess from anything he painted throughout that time). About the only exception here is futurism and its celebration of war and the machine - and there only really its manifestation in Italy. Russian futurism which it would be more accurate to describe as anarchism than fascism.
The connection isn't fascism but Modernism, which is characterised by a desire to produce by rational means a new way which will replace the "historically obsolete". The boom of people attempting to produce a "year zero" occurred in many fields in the early part of the 20th century (politics both left and right, painting, music, education, architecture, health (eugenics), theosophy (Scriabin)), but was not completely new (see the French Revolution), and derives from a utopian scientism which is the downside of Enlightenment thinking.
Re the thread topic, I know that Rautavaara started as a serialist, so his early work may fit the bill.
Mon, Feb 4 2013, 9:51AM
#5
RE: RE:
Of course people are still making art and music. I'm not claiming that art or music have reached their endpoint. What has reached its ultimate conclusion, pretty much from the cold war onward, is modernism's teleological view of history. We're in what you might call the post-modern era, if it were not such a misused, illdefined term. At any rate, the Big Stories, to borrow a term from Lyotard, are over, both in politics and in art. It's very unlikely that nowadays a composer will publish anything like this: 'It is not deviltry, but only the most ordinary common sense which makes me say that, since the discoveries made by the Viennese, all composition other than twelve-tone is useless.' (Boulez - Schoenberg is dead). In fact, tonality as well as styles from the past are being embraced again by lots of contemporary composers.
I doff my hat to anyone who can make such a deft reference to Lyotard - I wish I’d thought of doing so first.
And you’re right of course that we have long since left the era of modernism and are well into postmodernism (characterised by Lyotard as a ‘incredulity towards metanarratives’). This is the absolute antithesis of Greenberg who repeated argued that the works of Polllock and Newman were attempts to preserve a continuity of aesthetic quality from the ‘old Masters’ – Michelangelo, Raphael, Rembrandt – rather than to create any rupture with the past. I always thought that this part of Greenberg’s argument was a bit desperate – the great achievement of western art was surely the creation of the illusion of three-dimensional space within the two dimensional canvas, and it’s a bit of a leap of faith to suggest that its rejection by the focus the flatness of the painting’s surface was really a continuation of the same objectives.
Mon, Feb 4 2013, 1:28PM
#6
RE: RE:
Brumas
I can see your point and up to a point I might agree with it, except that when I read the words of artists like Boulez, particularly when they were younger, I am left with the impression that in part all of this was (as with every generation) an attempt to negate the past to make way for their version of the new (or as they might put it... modern). Some might term it hubris or iconaclasm or just the need to metaphorically 'murder your father'. What do you think?
I have been ready this thread with much interest - I cannot claim to have the breadth of knowledge regarding cultural thinking or theories that others have but it is illuminating and thought provoking. For the little that it is worth I believe there is serial music that stands the test of time and rewards listening. For me it is a little like the time I spent at the Rothko Chapel - you have to really listen without prejudice and if you are willing to put the effort in there are plenty of rewards. I would also add that of all the music I know it is the more 'modern', 'avante-garde' (or whatever term one wishes to use) that rewards live listening. I find that music by composers such as Boulez, Cage, Nono and Michael Gordon has an intensely visceral element that cannot be reproduced in the home...
Yes, of course there is also an element of patricide involved here. Also important is to realise the time at which these artists were active: just after the second world war and the first use of the atomic bomb. This post-war dissilusion with the western tradition (something that already appears in post WWI dada art) and nuclear dread led to a desire to start again with a blank slate, with a Zero Hour.
Of course people are still making art and music. I'm not claiming that art or music have reached their endpoint. What has reached its ultimate conclusion, pretty much from the cold war onward, is modernism's teleological view of history. We're in what you might call the post-modern era, if it were not such a misused, illdefined term. At any rate, the Big Stories, to borrow a term from Lyotard, are over, both in politics and in art. It's very unlikely that nowadays a composer will publish anything like this: 'It is not deviltry, but only the most ordinary common sense which makes me say that, since the discoveries made by the Viennese, all composition other than twelve-tone is useless.' (Boulez - Schoenberg is dead). In fact, tonality as well as styles from the past are being embraced again by lots of contemporary composers.
I doff my hat to anyone who can make such a deft reference to Lyotard - I wish I’d thought of doing so first.
And you’re right of course that we have long since left the era of modernism and are well into postmodernism (characterised by Lyotard as a ‘incredulity towards metanarratives’). This is the absolute antithesis of Greenberg who repeated argued that the works of Polllock and Newman were attempts to preserve a continuity of aesthetic quality from the ‘old Masters’ – Michelangelo, Raphael, Rembrandt – rather than to create any rupture with the past. I always thought that this part of Greenberg’s argument was a bit desperate – the great achievement of western art was surely the creation of the illusion of three-dimensional space within the two dimensional canvas, and it’s a bit of a leap of faith to suggest that its rejection by the focus the flatness of the painting’s surface was really a continuation of the same objectives.
Indeed, it's this sense of standing in a tradition that we have lost. No matter how iconoclasic people perceive him to be, Schoenberg always saw himself as the torchbearer of the tradition of German music, as following in the footsteps of Brahms.
The connection isn't fascism but Modernism, which is characterised by a desire to produce by rational means a new way which will replace the "historically obsolete". The boom of people attempting to produce a "year zero" occurred in many fields in the early part of the 20th century (politics both left and right, painting, music, education, architecture, health (eugenics), theosophy (Scriabin)), but was not completely new (see the French Revolution), and derives from a utopian scientism which is the downside of Enlightenment thinking.
Bingo.
Mon, Feb 4 2013, 2:39PM
#7
RE: RE: RE: RE: RE: RE:
Yes, of course there is also an element of patricide involved here....
Patricide is an interesting word to use here - that artists, composers, etc., have an almost Oepidal relationship with their predecessors and are torn between slavishly copying their works or rejecting (killing?) them entirely. And at the risk of bringing up another bit of theoretical writing, this is a fairly well trodden path and was, as far as I'm aware, first postulated by Harold Bloom in The Anxiety of Infuence (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Anxiety_of_Influence). This was in the context of poetry, but I see no reason why it cannot equally be aplied to music.
Indeed, it's this sense of standing in a tradition that we have lost. No matter how iconoclasic people perceive him to be, Schoenberg always saw himself as the torchbearer of the tradition of German music, as following in the footsteps of Brahms.
Good point - and you're absolutely right. Schoneberg (along with Berg, Webern, etc) was merley continuing the logic of late German Romanticism, in particular the streatching to breaking point traditional harmony and key structures in Wagner's late operas and elsewhere. In that respect the second Viennese school were the last great modernists who saw themselves as upholding the great tradition of western music. I doubt whether the same could be said of Stravinsky.
Mon, Feb 4 2013, 4:02PM
#8
RE: Serial music you can relax to?
I don't know whether Schoenberg "was merely continuing the logic of late German Romanticism", (let alone that he considered himself as the torchbearer of the tradition of German music, as following the "footsteps of Brahms"!), but what he produced along with the "other two" (particularly Webern) went considerably astray, to the effect that his (and their) opus worked even against this...tradition he was supposed to follow and stand for.
By the way, in which "sense" the "tradition had been lost" and Schoenberg came to...restore it and, eventually, save it?
Parla
Thu, Feb 7 2013, 12:00PM
#9
RE: RE: RE: RE: RE: RE:
Good point - and you're absolutely right. Schoneberg (along with Berg, Webern, etc) was merley continuing the logic of late German Romanticism, in particular the streatching to breaking point traditional harmony and key structures in Wagner's late operas and elsewhere. In that respect the second Viennese school were the last great modernists who saw themselves as upholding the great tradition of western music. I doubt whether the same could be said of Stravinsky.
Yes, Stravinsky is a whole other can of worms. In a way, he can be seen as a precursor of postmodernism in his renunciation of the 19th century logic of musical history as a linear and irreversibe process. Interestingly, it is also in his musical works that Stravinsky renounces the traditional idea of linear devellopment of a theme.
Thu, Feb 7 2013, 12:58PM
#10
RE: Serial music you can relax to?
Stravinsky, the "precursor of postmodernism"? Really? And what about the various setbacks, including his long return to his neoclassical period (more than 30 years, from the 1920s to the 1950s)?
By all means, he was always original, in one or the other way, but his Apollo sounds so beautifully classical, even inspiringly archaic. Likewise, his Concerto for Strings and so on.
Parla
Thu, Feb 7 2013, 5:35PM
#11
RE: Serial music you can relax to?
It is precisely his neoclassical period that is a precursor (and nothing more than that) of the kind of postmodern sensibilities that occured in the 60's. Leaving behind the idea of linear musical history, treating the musical past as a resource for new works, a rejection of (overt) subjectivism and emotionalism, a certain distance and irony etc.
Fri, Feb 8 2013, 1:30AM
#12
RE: Serial music you can relax to?
If you wish to see it like that, so be it. However, neoclassical means what the word exactly says. Among other things, it is considered as a tribute to the old Masters as well.
Parla
Fri, Feb 8 2013, 4:50PM
#13
RE:
It is precisely his neoclassical period that is a precursor (and nothing more than that) of the kind of postmodern sensibilities that occurred in the 60's. Leaving behind the idea of linear musical history, treating the musical past as a resource for new works, a rejection of (overt) subjectivism and emotionalism, a certain distance and irony etc.
Though I’ve not seen it described in those terms before, I think there is some truth in what you say. The way Stravinsky used Pergolesi’s music for Pulchinella (say) wasn’t simply an attempt to revive earlier forms of music but an appropriation, one effect of which was the implicit subversion of linear musical history. There’s a sort of analogy here with postmodern art in the way in which someone like Francis Bacon and the Chapman brothers recycled Goya or how Andy Warhol reused the Mona Lisa.
And just ignore anything that Parla says - he's only interested in displaying his lack of intelligence
Fri, Feb 8 2013, 4:50PM
#14
RE: RE:
It is precisely his neoclassical period that is a precursor (and nothing more than that) of the kind of postmodern sensibilities that occurred in the 60's. Leaving behind the idea of linear musical history, treating the musical past as a resource for new works, a rejection of (overt) subjectivism and emotionalism, a certain distance and irony etc.
Though I’ve not seen it described in those terms before, I think there is some truth in what you say. The way Stravinsky used Pergolesi’s music for Pulchinella (say) wasn’t simply an attempt to revive earlier forms of music but an appropriation of them, one effect of which was the implicit subversion of linear musical history. There’s a sort of analogy here with postmodern art in the way in which someone like Francis Bacon and the Chapman brothers recycled Goya or how Andy Warhol reused the Mona Lisa.
And just ignore anything that Parla says - he's only interested in displaying his lack of intelligence
Sat, Feb 9 2013, 2:39AM
#15
RE: Serial music you can relax to?
The fact that Stravinsky, in his neoclassical period, presented some works as a sor of "rethinking of 18th century styles" didn't prevent him from making unashamedly direct use of traditional forms and in his source material directly quotes from old Masters of the past (mostly the 18th c.).
While some works sound as clear rework of Classical material, like Pulcinella or Mavra or the Symphony of Psalms, at least some of them, like Apollon, Orpheus, Persephone glorify a curious return to the Classical era, while some others, like the Fairy's Kiss constitutes a clear tribute to the Russian Romanticism.
No wonder Adorno consider his noeclassical period as a "transition to positivity".
Parla
P.S.: Craig, since most of us refrain from dealing with any features of our posters in this forum, I would highly appreciated it, if you could do the same.
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So, who is writing memorable tunes these days? Memorability is what counts.