What makes music "modern"
Thu, Jan 24 2013, 7:01PM
#2
RE: What makes music "modern"
Modern is sooooo last century, we are post modern now, like hello, where have you been.
Thu, Jan 24 2013, 7:38PM
#3
RE: What makes music "modern"
I wondered how long it would be before someone mentioned that. A complete oxymoron (for morons).
Thu, Jan 24 2013, 9:32PM
#4
RE: What makes music "modern"
Thu, Jan 24 2013, 9:32PM
#5
RE: What makes music "modern"
Mon, Jan 28 2013, 6:56PM
#6
RE: What makes music "modern"
Hi 50ml!
It's a hugely important question, so thanks for aasking it!
Sometimes the big broad questions are hardest to answer - e.g. I still don't really understand why composers ditched the other modes in favour of just two, the Aeolian and the Ionian - to give us the major/minor division. How, when, where and why, exactly? Parla once answered that question for me - Rameau's treatise on harmony. I honestly don't yet know.
I think you are right about pushing at the boundaries, as is Brumas about the eventual cul-de-sac of the pursuit of the new. Oscar's three points are also thought-provoking.
One of the obvious points is how modern is one person's modern, as compared with another? Someone once described Alan Rawsthorne's music to me as modern. My music master at school once dismissed Copland's El Salon Mexico (set work) in words I'll never forget, as' a typical modern work. Take a couple of dance tunes, spice it up with a lavish orchestration and chuck in a few wrong notes'! (Thankfully he did get me into Britten by the way).
No doubt there are some who think that Ars Nova is punk rock, musically speaking!
For a lot of music lovers, 'modern' is a pejorative term.
Ultimately, it's about what musical language a composer chooses and how it's treated. Some people still can't accept 12-tone music.
Donald Mitchell, in his famous The Language of Modern Music (first published 1963 and yes therefore dated now) is at pains to point out both Stravinsky and Schoenberg's indebtedness to past models.
BUT I like Part's use of the past's church modes which strikes me as modern, whereas Eric Whitacre's more traditional language is too self-consciously beautiful for me - a bit sickly-sweet.
Mark
Does anyone happen to know when the word "modern" acquired its current peculiar charge? And how? I don't recall it used much in GBS's music criticism, in which he places his considerable eloquence behind the campaign for a greater understanding of Wagner in the UK. I suspect it might turn out to be one of the labels developed for the post-World War I rejection of almost everything regrded by the Edwardians and Victorians as part of their lives in favour of the cult of youth, speed, simple lines, light, white surfaces, aluminum or stainless steel, nudism, and brevity. If it is, it's a loaded term - when it isn't just an indication that something is of recent date. How "modern" is, say, Poulenc, in comparison with Britten?
Peter Street