My new piece - Symphonic Suite [WIP]

[Ian]

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.

Who have you got in mind?

[Richard Barrett]

I think Vettriano 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.

Well, I was only being half-serious myself! but I guess some people do take Vettriano seriously... others however might regard his work, some of the better-known examples of which were copied from a manual for illustrators, as crass and empty pseudo-erotica whose "success" derives from its easy reproducibility and decorativeness in printed form.

Not that I'm saying something similar about the music under discussion of course. But the point fg makes about music that seems deliberately to reject (or not to be aware of) part of its history is still valid. To me this raises the question: why? and, as a corollary, is this question answered within the music?

[mercia]

perhaps Vettriano wasn't a good example. Wikipedia says there is a current school of painting called Classical Realism. I think I would call Alma-Tadema a classical realist too.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classical_realism

[Ian]

But the point fg makes about music that seems deliberately to reject (or not to be aware of) part of its history is still valid. To me this raises the question: why? and, as a corollary, is this question answered within the music?

When fg names a composer who has adopted the “mannerisms of a previous century wholeheartedly” and, never-the-less, “expects to be taken seriously”, we might be one step closer to an answer.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Who have you got in mind?

I was remembering the "young fogey" movement of twenty years ago, to be honest - I cannot recall their names - and the comments Alex made about "romantic-esque harmony" in #19.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eZkE81_26c8

[Richard Barrett]

Wikipedia says there is a current school of painting called Classical Realism.

Exactly: a "school of painting" which derives its individuality from an explicitly anachronistic approach.

From that Wikipedia entry: "A central idea of Classical Realism is the belief that the Modern Art movements of the 20th century opposed the tenets and production of traditional art and caused a general loss of the skills and methods needed to produce it. Modernism was antagonistic to art as it was conceived by the Greeks, resurrected in the Renaissance, and carried on by the academies of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries."

This is rather similar to a Stalinist or fascist aesthetic is it not? - in other words an aesthetic promulgated in order to control and restrict the imaginations of artists and audiences. Probably the artists concerned don't see it in exactly those terms. But this kind of attitude, adopted as a deliberate "retro" pose by visual artists, is as fg says something more like an unquestioned assumption where music is concerned. For one thing many people use the term "contemporary classical music" as if there's nothing contradictory about it...

[Bryn]

I was remembering the "young fogey" movement of twenty years ago, to be honest - I cannot recall their names - ...

Not that young a fogey at the time, but how about Anthony Burgess, for one such?

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

No; those guys who heckled Gawain and declared that the future of Music was theirs ... Requiem for Sarajevo for Strings ...

[Richard Barrett]

the "young fogey" movement

You mean people like Keith Burstein and Frederick Stocken I guess.

I don't really understand though, Ian, why naming these names has any relevance to my question "why? and, as a corollary, is this question answered within the music?" which was asked of the piece of music supposedly under discussion here.

[Ian]

I was remembering the "young fogey" movement of twenty years ago, to be honest - I cannot recall their names - and the comments Alex made about "romantic-esque harmony" in #19.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eZkE81_26c8

Not really closer to an answer then. Surely there must be at least one piece of actual music out there that corroborates your world view.

[Ian]

You mean people like Keith Burstein and Frederick Stocken I guess.

I don't really understand though, Ian, why naming these names has any relevance to my question "why? and, as a corollary, is this question answered within the music?" which was asked of the piece of music supposedly under discussion here.

We are talking at cross purposes then. I didn't take fg's comment about adopting mannerisms... ext. to be a comment about this particular piece, but rather a general comment about the contemporary condition.

If your response to that comment was about this particular piece then I wonder why you ask the question rather than simply answering it?

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Not really closer to an answer then. Surely there must be at least one piece of actual music out there that corroborates your world view.

There is!!! I can't help it if it's unmemorable! Lament for Bosnia??? It was recorded, even - along with Barber's Adagio. And of course it's "closer" - the two bods making the fuss at the start of the clip made a "manifesto" against everything in Music since the First World War and claiming that the way forward was to return to the language of the first decade of the 20th Century.

Frederic Stocken!

[Ian]

There is!!! I can't help it if it's unmemorable! Lament for Bosnia??? It was recorded, even - along with Barber's Adagio. And of course it's "closer" - the two bods making the fuss at the start of the clip made a "manifesto" against everything in Music since the First World War and claiming that the way forward was to return to the language of the first decade of the 20th Century.

Frederic Stocken!

You mean this then:

https://soundcloud.com/frederickstocken/lament

Doesn't sound like anything I know from the 19th century.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Doesn't sound like anything I know from the 19th century.

Oooh! Your Freudian slip is showing! A hundred years ago is the Twentieth Century!

[Richard Barrett]

If your response to that comment was about this particular piece then I wonder why you ask the question rather than simply answering it?

I was asking it of the composer.