My new piece - Symphonic Suite [WIP]

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

But those who take art seriously tend to have different opinions on the value of certain artists' works.

We know that some currently well-established composers were dismissed in their lifetimes, and not 'taken seriously', and their works rubbished at the time by the 'experts' and even by some of their fellow-composers?

Well, yes - but did any composer/artist/writer so dismissed and revalued ever produce work based on an idiom a hundred years old? Bach? No - he was dismissed for writing Church music in the style of the generation immediately before his, but he was fully aware and receptive to the instrumental style of contemporary Italians. Brahms? Again criticized for wrtiting abstract instrumental works continuing a language initiated by Schumann and Mendelssohn in the previous generation, rather than the Artwork of the future - but Brahms was more aware of the significance of Wagner than any of Wagner's disciples, and adopted this language into his own (play the opening of the First Symphony without the tonic pedals and hear Tristan).

I think that Ian is suggesting that Stocken's work shows the same sort of adapting older Musical styles into a language that couldn't have been used in that older style. I am unconvinced - it sounds reactionary pastiche of a style much older than the immediately preceeding generation (as was the case with Bach and Brahms) to me: a deliberate desire to return to some mythical, nostalgist golden age than to create a vital language.

[Richard Barrett]

A bit like punk music then?

You've lost me now. Are you saying that punk music was made by people with "a sincerely held belief that they were bringing art back to its roots", or that it was related to totalitarian aesthetics (neither of which I would agree with, obviously), or something else?

Regarding your pedantry about this Lament piece, I don't think it's necessary to point out specific instances in the work of this early-20th-century composer or that to be able to hear that it's written in a deliberately "retro" style. That was the point surely. It is recognisable as something which rejects all the new musical possibilities which developed after the first couple of decades of the 20th century. Rejection as an artistic credo seems to me a somewhat uncreative starting point.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Lament doesn't sound like anything I know from c. 1914 either. However, I don't know everything - so references would be appreciated.

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

... you are quite right; not 1914, but 1896.

[Ian]

And I am writing in 2014 - and "one hundred years ago" refers to 1914, as I've emphasised: the period between 1905 - 1915; the era (and style) of Strauss, Mahler and their contemporaries, to which those composers so inclined working today make reference. Why this should be the "cut-off" point is something that interests me - why not Mendelssohn/Schumann ... or Haydn/Mozart ... or Bach/Handel ... or Byrd/Tallis ... ?

This is an interesting question, but I don't think the answer is that difficult. There is always a Lingua Franca. For example, something like Holst's Mars still works for contemporary audiences at a gut level (i.e you don't need a historical context to explain the reason why the music sounds the way it does) - in that sense it is still very contemporary. On the other hand Weber's Die Freischütz, is, sort of, past its sell by date - for example no one would really consider using music that sounds like Weber to add psychological drama to a contemporary horror film.

[Ian]

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

... you are quite right; not 1914, but 1896.

Doesn't do it for me. To my ears the harmony doesn't work in the same way. It's no more like the Strauss, than say, R.V.W. is like the Strauss.

[Richard Barrett]

Weber's Die Freischütz, is, sort of, past its sell by date - for example no one would really consider using music that sounds like Weber to add psychological drama to a contemporary horror film.

In the sense that no one would really consider using Johann Strauss II's Blue Danube Waltz to accompany spaceships in a science fiction movie, I guess you're right.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

This is an interesting question, but I don't think the answer is that difficult. There is always a Lingua Franca. For example, something like Holst's Mars still works for contemporary audiences at a gut level (i.e you don't need a historical context to explain the reason why the music sounds the way it does) - in that sense it is still very contemporary. On the other hand Weber's Die Freischütz, is, sort of, past its sell by date - for example no one would really consider using music that sounds like Weber to add psychological drama to a contemporary horror film.

Oh! I like this idea - although it does raise questions as to why Mars "still works" - doesn't, for example the opening of Act Two of Siegfired? Or Xenakis?

[Ian]

Oh! I like this idea - although it does raise questions as to why Mars "still works" - doesn't, for example the opening of Act Two of Siegfired? Or Xenakis?

I think so, yes.

As to why Mars still works (and you have to understand the context here - I really like Die Freishutz) I think it's because no one has come up with anything that does the job better.

[Ian]

In the sense that no one would really consider using Johann Strauss II's Blue Danube Waltz to accompany spaceships in a science fiction movie, I guess you're right.

Not in that sense, no. But in other senses very possibly. As it happens The Blue Danube still works as a Waltz in a way that that Weber's music doesn't work as Werewolf music.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

As to why Mars still works (and you have to understand the context here - I really like Die Freishutz) I think it's because no one has come up with anything that does the job better.

Hmmm. Except that it hasn't entered the consciousness of other nationalities (in France, Italy, Germany, Spain, Poland, Bulgaria ... ) in the way that it has for a generation brought up on Quatermass and the Pit and their children.

[Ian]

Tristan).

I think that Ian is suggesting that Stocken's work shows the same sort of adapting older Musical styles into a language that couldn't have been used in that older style. I am unconvinced - it sounds reactionary pastiche of a style much older than the immediately preceeding generation (as was the case with Bach and Brahms) to me: a deliberate desire to return to some mythical, nostalgist golden age than to create a vital language.

I'm pretty sure I wouldn't mistake it for a genuine piece of 19c - early 20c music. That, btw, doesn't mean I think it's any good. I would probably much prefer a piece that genuinely could have been written by Grieg or R. Strauss.

[Ian]

Hmmm. Except that it hasn't entered the consciousness of other nationalities (in France, Italy, Germany, Spain, Poland, Bulgaria ... ) in the way that it has for a generation brought up on Quatermass and the Pit and their children.

Hasn't Star Wars reached these countries yet?

Anyhow it hardly matters - the point is that it does explain why for some composers and listeners music originating from the early 20c is still works as contemporary music.

[Barbirollians]

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.

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.)

What about neoclassicism ? Why should everyone in the 21st century write squeaky door music nobody wants to hear ?

[Ian]

You've lost me now. Are you saying that punk music was made by people with "a sincerely held belief that they were bringing art back to its roots", or that it was related to totalitarian aesthetics (neither of which I would agree with, obviously), or something else?

I remember punk mainly being about getting rid of the bolloks (as they would put it) a reacation against the excess ( as they saw it) of prog rock etc - to reacquaint 'their' music to its 3-chord roots. Why is that so different to any 'movement' that wants to rebel against what they perceive as the 'establishment' status quo? This sort of reaction is also inevitable, do you not think? Can anything carry on in a straight line for ever?

To associate any such movement with totalitarian aesthetics is beyond my understanding or interest.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

What about neoclassicism ?

What about it? What do you think Neoclassicism is? Is there any work that can be so described that actually uses the harmonic and melodic style of Music written in the Classical and pre-Classical eras?

Why should everyone in the 21st century write squeaky door music nobody wants to hear ?

Thank you for describing me as a nobody: I love you, too. Do you really describe the Music of Richard Glover as "squeaky door Music" (or Different Trains for that matter)? The point is not to create Music that sounds like Ferneyhough or Lachenmann or Sciarrino or Barrett - it's that we are living at a time when "Music originating from the early twentieth century [a hindred years ago] still works as contemporary Music" as Ian so well put it. For the first time in history, an anachronistic Musical style is preferred by many to genuine exploration and development of the medium. I can only hear ossification in such an attitude - there is plenty of Music from the early Twentieth Century that isn't performed regularly (Schreker, Zemlinsky, Magnard, Ropartz) - why accept imitations if you don't like the genuinely new?