Rolling Classical 2019

I don't imagine that modern literature fans would eagerly share a comedy song about pining for the emotionless, incomprehensible writing of modern authors like Joyce, Woolf, Beckett, and cummings (but maybe they would).

I probably would tbh. But I've abandoned all hope of ever turning more than a pinch of people on to 'modernist' art. And when it does happen, it's usually an accident.

It would have to be a comedy short story

Even early 20th century abstract painting elicits less incomprehension, no doubt because it's less time-consuming.

There's a whole book about this phenomenon - the subtitle is something like Why Do People Like Rothko But Not Schoenberg? I've always meant to read it.

Here it is; it's called Fear of Music: Why People Get Rothko But Don't Get Stockhausen

That sounds interesting. I'd need to be convinced of the premise first, though.

I'll have to check it out, thanks. Too bad there's no matching phenomenon for poetry (haikus notwithstanding).

xp

The book is an OK read. Idk if it really arrives at a satisfying answer to that question and it turns into a kind of historical overview. Hard to deny that more people know Picasso and Dali than Schoenberg and Cage, at the least. I used to have my late 20th c avant-garde classes debate the question. Alex Ross and Philip Ball have also written about it (taking v different positions).xp

Just looking at the blurb, I'm not sure that this indicates much about popular enthusiasm for modern paintings; it's more about the extravagant amounts of money being moved around: "Works by 20th century abstract artists like Mark Rothko are selling for record breaking sums at auction, while the millions commanded by works by Andy Warhol and Francis Bacon make headline news."

The three reasons he arrives at in his conclusion are i) The Original (the cachet and financial value of original paintings - as you note) ii) The Distress ('difficult' music asks more of the listener than 'difficult' visual art asks of the viewer since the former is a time-based medium and you need to e.g. sit through Hymnen for two hours to even hear the piece, while you can look at a Rothko in a minute - as pomenitul notes) iii) The Corporation (wealthy corporations are more likely to sponsor modern art exhibitions than modern music concerts or recordings - although I don't think he did a great job of interrogating the reasons why this might be true).

lol at alison brown up there

The idea is cute and a lot of work probably went into it but the ol' atonal music was NOT about favouring intellect over emotion.

there is a scene in the marlon brando version of island of dr moreau which also makes this incorrect point (Moreau plays serialism on piano, animal men get restive, Moreau plays Gershwin on piano, animal men get all happy)

Atonal music (incl. 12-tone) is too broad and has too many different possible approaches to really make a thesis like Stubbs's thesis stick for me. Rothko/Stockhausen is a false dichotomy imo-- Rothko's musical equivalent is Ligeti's Requiem et al., which is very easy for any listener of any level of experience or age to appreciate.

I'm trying to think of any analogs I've privately drawn between visual artist and composer and, like:

Glass = Motherwell
Boulez = ??
Cage = Pollock
Stockhausen = god I don't know.. Paul McCarthy?

Or Rothko = Feldman, duh

Heh, the fact that you thought both of Ligeti and Feldman as sonic translations of Rothko is quite interesting. Analogies between the Muses are fraught with approximations, which doesn't mean that they're useless or merely fanciful or random.

For Boulez, it's tempting to say Paul Klee, because Pierre himself said so, but it wouldn't have automatically sprung to mind otherwise.

Fwiw, Stubbs does not limit himself to atonal notated music specifically but discusses "avant-garde music" defined more broadly. Iirc, he actually spends a lot of time on free improv as well as on Hendrix, Eno, postpunk stuff like PiL, and avant electronica like Aphex Twin and Scanner, along with modern composers, which makes the thesis pretty dubious.

Ooh OK that does sound interesting

And also, duh, of course Boulez = Klee, or even more so: Kandinsky

But I mean, isn't it true that more people buy prints of Rothko for their dorm room, or would go to a Rothko exhibit, than would buy an album of Ligeti compositions or attend a Ligeti concert? (Not sure if people enjoying films that use Ligeti in the soundtrack quite counts.) Even a noticeable segment of the paying BSO audience were unappreciative of the Violin Concerto last year. xp

I would agree with that. Ligeti's popular aura is inseparable from Kubrick's visuals, whereas Rothko copycats litter the walls of countless hotels – their success is partly predicated on how easy they are to ignore.

I always come back to Pascal Quignard's quip in The Hatred of Music: 'Ears have no (eye)lids.'

He wrote that in the context of auditory torture (Auschwitz, Guantanamo, etc.), which I suppose leads to a broader point about music's greater potential for immediate, overwhelming and uncontrollable affect.

Sund4r I think 2001's enduring popularity is enormously due to the enormous power and wide-spread appeal of Ligeti's Lontano and Requiem, and the dorm-room ubiquity of both that movie (at least, in my generation) and Rothko's prints make the two of them comparable under this examination

The reason why the BSO didn't like Ligeti's Violin Concerto is because, as I've stated before: it's a bad, bad, bad, bad piece

(I actually like the Violin Concerto fine but it lacks the thesis-forward approach of my favourite-favourites of Ligeti's work-- Clocks And Clouds, Atmospheres, Lontano, Requiem, piano pieces, Continuum, organ drone-y works. Le Grand Macabre remains the only non-micropolytonal work of Ligeti's that I've heard and really adore)

*micropolyphonal, ugh I always get the word wrong

Ligeti's is the Derrida of violin concertos. Gawriloff/Boulez's take sounds off (or it doesn't get its off-soundingness right) but Zimmermann/de Leeuw's is pitch-(im)perfect. Do you also dislike the viola sonata?

I was just listening to a live Isabelle Faust take of the ligeti. I’m really into Isabelle Faust rn.

FGTI what about the horn trio? It is thesisy yet not micropolyphonic

Lutoslawski = Kandinsky
Crumb = Joseph Cornell

I really need to hear that live recording! Isabelle Faust is incredible.

You'll laugh but it was originally mediafired to me by a classical maven pen pal who passed away in 2010 and who always had the disclaimer 'please do not redistribute' with his links (he was an inveterate broadcast-capturer). The crazy thing is his mediafire account and links are still live after all these years...! Would good old Manuel care if I shared some of his stuff at this point?

Most of the rest of my live Faust holdings are from the very active SymphonyShare google group which you must join if you haven't already. This Faust jag was kicked off by an incredible performance of the Schoenberg concerto that was shared there (her + Daniel Harding)

Thanks, I'll look into it. There's always a way...

Oh god no I love the viola sonata. I think I got into some condescending rabbit hole like five years ago trying to express that I don't think alternate tuning stuff was "good composition" unless there was some kind of payoff for the performer/listener, it's like the 3D glasses of composing, like, if you're going to go there, please make it necessary, and the first movement of the Ligeti is the ne plus ultra for what I think is good writing in this regard, it's a 10/10

The rest of the sonata is basically just Bartok to me but I like it more than the Bartok solo violin sonata, so... good work Gyorgy

The horn trio I only heard once and it's fine

I agree w you about alt tunings

Speaking of which I am about to introduce myself to the Haas String Quartet #3 “iij. Noct.” Wish me luck!

Not really the right thread for it maybe but I was offered a small fee to score a documentary and I got it in my head that I might write a continuous piece of music for string quartet as the score, did so, everybody's happy, going to record it on Thursday, so yay I guess I wrote a string quartet

Also I just spoke to a woman yesterday who may or may not be related somehow to ulysses but she reported that my commission for the Brooklyn Youth Chorus is a real humdinger and they're happy with it. The libretto is hilarious and has the kids singing threateningly conservative jargonism at the audience interspersed with quotes from Cyclops's angry speech to Odysseus prior to eating a couple of his men (taken from three different sources)

Anyway it's on March 21 if anybody lives in NYC and cares to attend

The libretto is hilarious and has the kids singing threateningly conservative jargonism at the audience interspersed with quotes from Cyclops's angry speech to Odysseus prior to eating a couple of his men (taken from three different sources)

Whoa!

Ya there's a part where they sing "Satyr! Give me whey! Gulping, gaping bowls of whey!" which is literally Homer and Huntychan at the same time

Hope the kids like it

my understanding is that the kids are finding it very amusing

i am amused that "the woman who may or may not be related somehow to ulysses" is communicating about a speech from the cyclops to odysseus; shit has gotten epic

(my connect over there is named L3ah; i imagine you're in touch with D1an3?)

Yep that's right

cool, i'm looking forward to hearing this.

that song is terrible beyond belief but i don't feel validated every time somebody name-checks John Cage ymmv

In my experience, most anglophones are familiar with John Cage (4'33 in particular) and some have vaguely heard of Schoenberg and, to a lesser degree, Berg.

Webern, on the other hand…

I'm beating a dead fun-hating horse at this point but fwiw, with regards to:

I somehow doubt he is trying to be historically accurate.

I understand that most of his videos ARE meant to be accurate and educational in their comedy (they're usually about economics rather than music): "Merle loves for his music to be used in the classroom. "

In my uni teaching experience, I couldn't really expect students to come in familiar with any modern composers of notated music, btw.

Congrats on the new performances, fgti.

This is my dad's composition. I'm so fucking proud.

https://youtu.be/mzohsaDtTQg?t=213

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mzohsaDtTQg&feature=youtu.be&t=211

(starts around 3:30)

Ok let's try that one more time
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mzohsaDtTQg

mazel

Wonderful this is beautiful

Alex Ross's preliminary EOY list:

https://www.therestisnoise.com/2019/11/preliminary-end-of-year-list.html

We don't really see eye to eye (hear ear to ear?) but the Danish Quartet's Prism II and the Riot Ensemble's Speak, Be Silent both deserve to place. At the risk of repeating myself, I'm burnt out on Feldman, found Zosha di Castro's monograph to be full of hotshot smugness and have yet to hear George Benjamin's Lessons in Love and Violence (I'm generally a big fan, even though I'm less interested in his operas).

I’ll definitely plan to hear that Honeck/Pittsburgh Bruckner 9th - I cant think of a better US conductor-orchestra combo on record this decade

NAC in Ottawa commissioning a Philip Glass work in honour of Peter Jennings: https://abcnews.go.com/US/philip-glass-write-orchestral-work-honor-news-anchor/story?id=67679791

shuddering with pleasure at the idea of Philip Glass composing 30 second stingers for news broadcasts

went to the guggenheim last night for Tigue and Roomful of Teeth and Caroline Shaw presented a new piece that was as lovely as anything I've heard all year.

This is how workers at Opéra de Paris go on strike (sound on, please). pic.twitter.com/SN682BM6ze

— Ted Gioia (@tedgioia) December 18, 2019

PROMO: The latest cd from my choir is out now: https://open.spotify.com/album/4k1FnvR7AIzP2IQCfrFEoz?si=gqG6dtAaTi-2UpcRWuY6Bw Danish choir music, amateur choir, but the Vagn Holmboe is pretty great, at least.

'Grats! I always have time for more Holmboe.

New thread for a new year: Rolling Classical 2020