Late Baroque, Early Classical or…?

[ardcarp]

I think that we are living in one of the richest periods of Music History that there has ever been - producing some of the best Music that has ever been. It is probably the sheer bewildering variety that ahinton suggests

I'm just a grumpy old git, of course, but I wonder whether future hindsight [!] will recognise "a bewildering variety" or a mish-mash?

[teamsaint]

"Proto Classical," if we must use labels?

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

I'm just a grumpy old git, of course, but I wonder whether future hindsight [!] will recognise "a bewildering variety" or a mish-mash?

Well, the future will have to sort that out for itself: I've got my own problems! But it will be a very different place with different ways of listening to and acquiring access to what it hears from how we were brought up. All those books that we read that authoritatively told us that some composers (whose work we were never likely to hear - and which, one suspects with hindsight, the writers themselves hadn't heard) wrote Music that wasn't really worth the time and effort needed to listen to it.

The Present (and I think it is a gift to be alive at such an exciting time) lets us hear and judge for ourselves; and I think that we're increasingly seeing that there is more of a mish-mash of ideas in the Seventeenth Century than the tidy History books used to tell us.


(And you're NOT "just a grumpy old git", ardy. You have many other qualities, too! )

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

"Proto Classical," if we must use labels?

Hmm - but that suggests a deficiency, doesn't it? (In the sense that a "prototype" is a model that was created in order to iron out the problems before the real thing was put into use/on the market - and a "protozoa" is ... err ... the thing that ... umm ... comes before a zoa.)

[teamsaint]

Hmm - but that suggests a deficiency, doesn't it? (In the sense that a "prototype" is a model that was created in order to iron out the problems before the real thing was put into use/on the market - and a "protozoa" is ... err ... the thing that ... umm ... comes before a zoa.)

the definition I checked was:

original or primitive.
"prototherian"



•first or earliest.
"protomartyr"




although usage may tend to suggest something such as the early forms of the ever popular Zoa....as you suggest.....

( protomartyr is a new one on me......!!)

[jean]

Hmm - but that suggests a deficiency, doesn't it? (In the sense that a "prototype" is a model that was created in order to iron out the problems before the real thing was put into use/on the market...

I don't think so - proto- just means first, it's perhaps the -type that suggests a pattern to be followed.

- and a "protozoa" is ... err ... the thing that ... umm ... comes before a zoa.)

No - it's just a first living thing!

But I still don't really see the value of labels in this context, and I wonder at what point in the mental processes of programmers they becopme crucial. There was a time when we hardly ever heard Telemann, because it had been decided that his music was boring, despite being safely baroque; and J C and C P E Bach get played quite a bit, surely?

[jean]

(protomartyr is a new one on me......!!)

There's only one of him - where were you on December 26th?

[Richard Barrett]

I beg to differ. I think that we are living in one of the richest periods of Music History that there has ever been

I think this is true, and that it's necessary to get away from the idea that music history consists of a string of "next big things" in a linear progression. Also it's important I think not to see music history as being isolated from the rest of history. The period nominally under discussion coincides with changes in society and thought whose effects on music were many and varied but include in particular a shift in emphasis from courtly and ecclesiastical contexts towards public concert-giving, and the spread of ideas connected with the Enlightenment. So when creative musicians do "something different" they are often responding to, more or less consciously, or partaking in, a larger movement in social orders and hierarchies.

As for the present, as often in the music itself, one person's bewlldering variety is another person's mish-mash. And if it had been possible in the 1750s for any one individual to assimilate the variety of music being produced not just in western Europe but throughout the world, they would have seen a similar kind of variety/mish-mash. What is different now is that it is possible to have such an overview, and to witness the coexistence of progressive and retrogressive tendencies, embrace and rejection of technological possibilities, extremes of simplicity and complexity and so on. It's no use expecting something like a common practice to resolve out of this situation at present, or for that matter to make predictions about what lies further down the line.

[teamsaint]

There's only one of him - where were you on December 26th?

oh probably at the St Stephen's day football......

[teamsaint]

I think this is true, and that it's necessary to get away from the idea that music history consists of a string of "next big things" in a linear progression. Also it's important I think not to see music history as being isolated from the rest of history. The period nominally under discussion coincides with changes in society and thought whose effects on music were many and varied but include in particular a shift in emphasis from courtly and ecclesiastical contexts towards public concert-giving, and the spread of ideas connected with the Enlightenment. So when creative musicians do "something different" they are often responding to, more or less consciously, or partaking in, a larger movement in social orders and hierarchies.

As for the present, as often in the music itself, one person's bewlldering variety is another person's mish-mash. And if it had been possible in the 1750s for any one individual to assimilate the variety of music being produced not just in western Europe but throughout the world, they would have seen a similar kind of variety/mish-mash. What is different now is that it is possible to have such an overview, and to witness the coexistence of progressive and retrogressive tendencies, embrace and rejection of technological possibilities, extremes of simplicity and complexity and so on. It's no use expecting something like a common practice to resolve out of this situation at present, or for that matter to make predictions about what lies further down the line.

not that much fun to be had in predictability, anyway.

Side issue, but if you are interested in just some the extraordinary breadth of music available to listen to, it brings with it the potential for a kind of guilt trip, which probably didn't really exist, or at least in a much more proto form (!) even 20 or 30 years ago.

It really is impossible to listen to, hear live, support all the artists one might want to, and what remains might be a kind of guilt at letting them down, or failing to appreciate the music.

this swing from relative scarcity to ( over?)abundance is something we are only just starting to deal with.

[jean]

...it's necessary to get away from the idea that music history consists of a string of "next big things" in a linear progression...

That works retrospectively, too - we shouldn't devalue the music still being composed in 'Renaissance' style is some parts of Europe when 'Baroque' had firmly taken hold elsewhere?

(Same with architecture, of course.)

And what about that extraordinary flowering of what could even be called late-medieval music in sixteenth-century England?

[ahinton]

As in TS Eliot's comment that new art not only changes what happens next but what has happened before, perhaps? The idea that The Rite of Spring changes perceptions of the Eroica - "History" being as much how we think about the past [about ourselves] as a list of what happened in it.)

Well, at the very least, there can be no realistic doubt that we all listen to pre-20th century music differently having heard Le Sacre to take just one example) than we would if we'd not done so. I connot lay my hands on Robert Simpson's comment (perhaps it was in a talk?), when expressing his ill-concealed suspicion of the undue precedence being assumed (as he seemd to see it) by the HIPP movement, that we cannot listen to J S Bach as his contemporaries did because we have listened to Xenakis (and I somehow doubt that Simpson mentioned Xenakis often!); although a deliberately simplistic and typically down-to-earth way of putting it, he surely had a point? So, whilst new art might not necessarily change what has happened before per se, it is unlikely not to change our perceptions of and responses to what had gone before...

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

this swing from relative scarcity to ( over?)abundance is something we are only just starting to deal with.

- Sums up my #33 rather neatly, ts - many thanks.

(And you and jean are absolutely right about "proto" - as I should have realized had I thought about "protagonist".)

[jean]

I keep thinking of those protoplasmic ancestors - whose were they? - a very state-of-the-art joke in the nineteenth century!

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Well, at the very least, there can be no realistic doubt that we all listen to pre-20th century music differently having heard Le Sacre to take just one example) than we would if we'd not done so. I connot lay my hands on Robert Simpson's comment (perhaps it was in a talk?), when expressing his ill-concealed suspicion of the undue precedence being assumed (as he seemd to see it) by the HIPP movement, that we cannot listen to J S Bach as his contemporaries did because we have listened to Xenakis (and I somehow doubt that Simpson mentioned Xenakis often!); although a deliberately simplistic and typically down-to-earth way of putting it, he surely had a point?

He had a point, certainly - but in this case whilst missing the point. I wouldn't be much interested in hearing Bach "as his contemporaries did" any more than I'd be interested in looking at Rembrandt as his did - I want to hear (with my early 21st Century ears and late 20th Century mind) the timbres and balances and speeds that Bach himself might have expected.