My new piece - Symphonic Suite [WIP]

[Richard Barrett]

It is interesting that it is only now that there are composers who adopt the mannerisms of a previous century wholeheartedly and expect to be taken seriously. It is only in the world of Music that this happens - nobody paints in the style of Alma-Tadema, nobody writes plays a la Pinero or novels in the manner of Rudyard Kipling. Quite apart from any individual's work, this is a fascinating aspect of early Twenty-First Century Musical attitudes - perhaps on a different Thread. (But I think Alex might find it useful to consider such points.)

Quite.

[Serial_Apologist]

I remember somebody - it might have been Robert Simpson - saying that in speaking of a need to be "contemporary" some composers were exhibiting over selfconscious attitudes towards a matter that should be worked out sub- or unconcsiously in the actual creative process, rather than being amenable to verbal explanation. He then went on to state that great composers of the past had not felt the necessity to see themselves in terms of larger historical processes in which their input played some important, or at least, selfconscious part, and asked, did Beethoven consider his music in terms of its place in history? to which he responded, no. I remember thinking, well, maybe some modern sense of progress being reflected in artistic advance and the ditching of thought processes rendered archaic by the spread and growth of knowledge, is indispensable to civilisation's advance, if inclusivity is to be seen as inseparable from such advance if democracy is to have any meaning.

It also struck me as an odd thing to say in that some presumed non-historical consciousness (which I have doubts about anyway especially in Beethoven's case) didn't stand in the way of Beethoven's advancing of the means available in the compositional field for musical expression, but in the 20th century definitely did stand in the way of certain composers who consciously stepped back or withheld availing themselves from the new means being made possible by Schoenberg. I'm thinking in particular of Franz Schmidt, who at one time had been closely associated with Schoenberg, but whose later music became strongly reflective, if not expressive, of a powerful sense of a national culture on a brink of extinction. Schoenberg's aesthetic does not, after all, ask that we all go out and start burning down the symbols let alone the citadels of power and privilege, but to look inside ourselves, which ain't so different from what religion asks. For all the neo-Rococo splendour that hides itself from all that lies outside the door, one nevertheless feels the inability of the composer of those late operas to extinguish the contradictions of the age laid bare by modernism in the acts of inauthenticity they represent, but which the inner language cannot entirely conceal - which maybe explains why so many, half recognising the bad faith that fails to get to grips with unpalatable realities, find themselves moved in some special way by the Four Late Songs?

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Schoenberg's aesthetic does not, after all, ask that we all go out and start burning down the symbols let alone the citadels of power and privilege, but to look inside ourselves, which ain't so different from what religion asks. For all the neo-Rococo splendour that hides itself from all that lies outside the door, one nevertheless feels the inability of the composer of those late operas to extinguish the contradictions of the age laid bare by modernism in the acts of inauthenticity they represent, but which the inner language cannot entirely conceal - which maybe explains why so many, half recognising the bad faith that fails to get to grips with unpalatable realities, find themselves moved in some special way by the Four Late Songs?

I'm having difficulty following your argument here, S_A.

[Serial_Apologist]

I'm having difficulty following your argument here, S_A.

Phew! - perhaps, having inconveniently forgotten that some people with whom I'm generally in agreement really do love the later Strauss for other than political reasons, and not realising my paucity with words can lay me open to misinterpretation, I should have kept silent on this question.

And it is a question that is more difficult to articulate in terms of composers of the Austro-German tradition who turned their backs on modernism for reasons which for me cannot separate artistic from political integrity. And that's all I'm saying and probably should say, really, now that so much water having gone under the ideological bridge makes things difficult if not impossible to equate between past figureheads of this or that persuasion and present-day composers faced with the plethora of options concerning aesthetics, technical means and promotion.

It's probably my problem that I identify with composers who defended modernism in the teeth of fascism and Stalinism because I foresee the lessons being forgotten and offering a bleak future. While there are still composers expanding rather than retracting the means of musical expression that's all I should be happy with, really.

[mercia]

I'm not sure that I would agree that there are no artists who paint in the style of a previous era - Vettriano springs to mind but there must be other examples

[ahinton]

Except that, when Rachmaninoff was 27 he had already published sixteen works (including the First Symphony) and was about to start work on his Second Piano Concerto. None of these works were written in a style that could be confused with that of a hundred years earlier: Rachmaninoff developed a style of his own that had its foundations in the current Music that existed in Russia when he was a young man; not that of generations before.

Well, of course; that's why I referred specifically and solely to the Rachmaninov of the "Amercian period".

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Well, of course; that's why I referred specifically and solely to the Rachmaninov of the "Amercian period".

Then I'm not sure what your point was. (Ah! Unless I haven't made myself clear that when I said "Rachmaninoff developed a style of his own ... " I meant throughout his life, including the American years, not merely at the age of 27 - the age Alex is now.)

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Phew! - perhaps, having inconveniently forgotten that some people with whom I'm generally in agreement really do love the later Strauss for other than political reasons, and not realising my paucity with words can lay me open to misinterpretation, I should have kept silent on this question.

No - it was more a case (with my "difficulty") of following which of the three composers (Schönberg, Schmidt or Strauss) you referred to was also being referred to in the "all the neo-Rococo splendour that hides itself from all that lies outside the door, one nevertheless feels the inability of the composer of those late operas to extinguish the contradictions of the age laid bare by modernism in the acts of inauthenticity they represent, but which the inner language cannot entirely conceal" bit. (You didn't mention Strauss at all, and referred to him only at the end. I thought you were talking about Arnie! ("those operas" meaning "the [later] Opus numbers) - or maybe Schmidt!

I get it now!

[Serial_Apologist]

No - it was more a case (with my "difficulty") of following which of the three composers (Schönberg, Schmidt or Strauss) you referred to was also being referred to in the "all the neo-Rococo splendour that hides itself from all that lies outside the door, one nevertheless feels the inability of the composer of those late operas to extinguish the contradictions of the age laid bare by modernism in the acts of inauthenticity they represent, but which the inner language cannot entirely conceal" bit. (You didn't mention Strauss at all, and referred to him only at the end. I thought you were talking about Arnie! ("those operas" meaning "the [later] Opus numbers) - or maybe Schmidt!

I get it now!

Oh dear - sorreeee, ferney!

[ahinton]

Then I'm not sure what your point was. (Ah! Unless I haven't made myself clear that when I said "Rachmaninoff developed a style of his own ... " I meant throughout his life, including the American years, not merely at the age of 27 - the age Alex is now.)

I think that we're on the same wavelength now! Rachmaninov was accused by some of his detractors during the 1930s and early 1940s of not even trying to say anything "new"; that certainly didn't happen by the time that the composer attained the age of 27! Similar observations were made about Medtner, who survived Rachmaninov by some eight years and died four months to the day after Schönberg, yet in his youth he was regarded by some of his Russian contemporaries as a "modernist"!

One issue that I have, as I indicated earlier, is with assessing the hows, the whys and the wherefores of composers "reflecting" or "responding to" their own time, not least in cases such as Ornstein and Carter, each of whose works stretch over more than 80 years (which is longer than a lot of composers actually lived) and the extent to which others might readily be able to identify their appearing to do so (or not do so). It's surely also a question of place as well as time; might Busoni's works have been different had be remained in Italy rather than living most of his mature life in Germany? What might have happened to Ornstein's had he remained in Russia? The question of how well or otherwise various composers' work "travels" at any given time might arguably be another factor when considering this.

[ahinton]

Oh dear - sorreeee, ferney!

I admit that I, too, wa a little confused but then figured out the thrust of what you were saying when I realised that your omission of Strauss's name arose from your having taken for granted that the sense of what you wrote would come across without it! (slow witted or what?!)

[Serial_Apologist]

I admit that I, too, wa a little confused but then figured out the thrust of what you were saying when I realised that your omission of Strauss's name arose from your having taken for granted that the sense of what you wrote would come across without it! (slow witted or what?!)

More like partial brain disconnect on MY part, ahinton!

[Richard Barrett]

I'm not sure that I would agree that there are no artists who paint in the style of a previous era - Vettriano springs to mind but there must be other examples

... but remember that fg said "it is only now that there are composers who adopt the mannerisms of a previous century wholeheartedly and expect to be taken seriously"...

[Flosshilde]

I think Vetriano expects to be taken seriously - it's pretty daft to suggest that an artists would not expect to be - and he is by many people.

[P. G. Tipps]

I think Vetriano expects to be taken seriously - it's pretty daft to suggest that an artists would not expect to be - and he is by many people.

... and anyway all this does beg the rather obvious question ... 'expects to be taken seriously' by whom, exactly?.