My new piece - Symphonic Suite [WIP]

[kea]

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)

... because it relates to the music of our time, specifically much of that for films/TV/video games, which often sounds more or less like a Holst/Mahler/Rachmaninov pastiche and nonetheless expects to be taken seriously. I would have assumed this would be the obvious answer to "composers who are writing retrospective music in the 21st century and still expect to be taken seriously"—Hans Zimmer, Jerry Goldsmith, Danny Elfman et cetera—rather than the fairly obscure and not-very-seriously-taken British composers mentioned by fhg above.

And this is nothing new either. Until the 19th century or so, a good deal of Roman Catholic liturgical music was expected to be composed in a style not much further advanced than Palestrina. That sort of thing was a 'lingua franca' for patrons of the religious establishments, just as the film music style (originated of course by composers for whom that was the contemporary stylistic mainstream, like Korngold—and having since expanded to encompass all sorts of later developments) is a 'lingua franca' for people who watch films and television.

[ahinton]

All of this said - and interesting indeed it is that much of it has been - doesn't the factor of "but is it any good?" still possibly count at least alongside the question of how the music itself might seem to fit some people's ideas of what might be thought to be of the present day, to the extent of arguably "reflecting" or being a "response to" today's music? My only concern in even submitting this question is that of hoping to avoid too simplistic and complacent a view of it all...

[kea]

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?

It may be related to the development of recorded music and subsequent deterioration in musical education... with so much music available people stopped seeing the need for "new" music, and with the lack of education music stopped being an activity and became an entertainment. But I'm not sure that really answers the question either.

[teamsaint]

There are surely important issues of interpretation .

Critics bringing advanced literary theory and theoretical techniques to bear on a Shakespeare play might explain the play in a very different way to a traditional close reading, and this might produce new insights, but it doesn't necessarily invalidate a close reading. It might just add valuable insight, or in fact be somewhat spurious.

can the same not be said of approaches to the music? The different speeds of creators, critics , academics and audience are all part of a creative process, aren't they?

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

In response to ahinton:

Oh, yes - choice of an idiom doesn't guarantee quality - there's a lot of Music "in the 'style' of" the composers I cited that isn't particularly good, just as there is genuinely new and good Music using a language (allow that word for the time being) closer to older traditions: Ronald Stevenson, for example (to save your blushes - no, sod it) or Alistair Hinton. If there were composers whose Music gave a sense of developing the language of, say, Robert Simpson I'd have no complaints (unless that was the only stuff produced). But to use an historic idiom (its harmonic, melodic, rhythmic and structural features) outside of the culture and circumstances which gave that idiom its authentic energy - I cannot imagine that anything genuine (or "good", if you prefer) could possibly come from that.

[Ian]

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

The contemporary musical lingua franca is a very complex and wide ranging thing. This is perhaps to be expected when two people living in the same street at the same time could have had completely different musical up bringings. New music certainly feeds the lingua franca and, to a point, refreshes it, but the idea that new music should, or could, sweep away all that came before it (as perhaps it once did) is a forlorn hope. There are too many different points of view out there and no strong authority to keep control of it all. But why is that a bad thing?

[Richard Barrett]

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

I don't think anyone has suggested that everyone should do such an obviously pointless thing. On the other hand I think it's completely valid to question why retrospective musical styles are accepted as "contemporary" as never before in history. The factors mentioned by kea clearly play a part. Nor is it the case that 21st century composers of squeaky door music nobody wants to hear are so closed-minded as not to accept the possibility of a retrospective style producing something interesting, but I've never heard a piece of recent music which is stylistically retrospective in the sense under discussion that really stands up (as far as I'm concerned) in comparison to music composed at a time when that style was really "contemporary".

[Ian]

All of this said - and interesting indeed it is that much of it has been - doesn't the factor of "but is it any good?" still possibly count at least alongside the question of how the music itself might seem to fit some people's ideas of what might be thought to be of the present day, to the extent of arguably "reflecting" or being a "response to" today's music? My only concern in even submitting this question is that of hoping to avoid too simplistic and complacent a view of it all...

Is it any good? is a question only an individual can answer, and that answer only really holds for that individual.

I don't really get the idea that because a something about music might have first emerged 10, 50, 100, 300 years ago the use of that something means the music isn't 'genuinely' contemporary. For me music (and composing) is more about ideas - whether they have that magical ingredient x. It would bother me that a winning original (i.e it doesn't infringe anyone's copyright) idea COULD have been written by Grieg or Strauss (for example) in fact I find it thrilling to discover such ideas - unfortunately it doesn't happen very often.

[kea]

I don't think it's possible to compose music in a style that's not contemporary. IMSLP is full of scores by composers trying to revive styles of previous eras, and so were my undergraduate harmony & counterpoint classes (in that case for exercises). In almost no cases do they actually succeed in approximating the style they are trying to revive—'classical revival' pieces are full of harmonic progressions derived from 20th century pop music and voice-leading and voicing errors that would have been unthinkable in the 18th century when music was written at the pianoforte rather than on a computer and instruction started at age five instead of twenty-five; neo-Bachian fugues and canons become infested with classical and romantic idioms (just compare Mendelssohn's E minor fugue for piano to any real Bach fugue for a particularly egregious example). Every 21st century composer I've encountered who describes their style as 'romantic' (or 'emotional', or 'melodic' etc) in fact derives their style from a combination of John Williams and lounge music. (The ones capable of writing 'genuine' Romantic music, like Rochberg or Robin Holloway, were all trained as modernists... and have enough historical awareness to never be capable of 'just' writing a romantic piece even if it's what they might want to do at the time. Rochberg's Transcendental Variations tries its hardest to sound like late Beethoven—and does manage, for a while—but ends up in an uncomfortable no-man's land abutted by early Schoenberg, Mahler and contemporary film music.)

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

The contemporary musical lingua franca is a very complex and wide ranging thing. This is perhaps to be expected when two people living in the same street at the same time could have had completely different musical up bringings. New music certainly feeds the lingua franca and, to a point, refreshes it, but the idea that new music should, or could, sweep away all that came before it (as perhaps it once did) is a forlorn hope. There are too many different points of view out there and no strong authority to keep control of it all. But why is that a bad thing?

Indeed - I don't think we can talk about a "contemporary Musical lingua franca", the huge variety of Musical styles is polyglot. Nor do I think that any successful Musical style has ever swept away what came before (in spite of what the young Boulez might have wanted) - except in the very real sense of how Beethoven did this: not "sweeping away" the language of Haydn and Mozart, but making the idea of returning to it ridiculous. But that is what some composers seek to do today - to pretend that Varese and Xenakis and Gruppen and Birtwistle and Feldman and Scelsi and Reich (to say nothing of Coltrane or Captain Beefheart) never happened. It is "a bad thing" because Music based on denial has its own built-in obsolescence. With so many genuinely new ways of Musical expression and communication to be explored, it's a forgery to photocopy the old notes. Especially when there is so much neglected from the period it apes.

[Ian]

Indeed - I don't think we can talk about a "contemporary Musical lingua franca", the huge variety of Musical styles is polyglot. Nor do I think that any successful Musical style has ever swept away what came before (in spite of what the young Boulez might have wanted) - except in the very real sense of how Beethoven did this: not "sweeping away" the language of Haydn and Mozart, but making the idea of returning to it ridiculous. But that is what some composers seek to do today - to pretend that Varese and Xenakis and Gruppen and Birtwistle and Feldman and Scelsi and Reich (to say nothing of Coltrane or Captain Beefheart) never happened. It is "a bad thing" because Music based on denial has its own built-in obsolescence. With so many genuinely new ways of Musical expression and communication to be explored, it's a forgery to photocopy the old notes. Especially when there is so much neglected from the period it apes.

I can only conclude then that no one yet has made the tonal language of the last hundred or so years redundant. I'm not saying it will never happen, but in the meantime in what sense was it ridiculous of me to write this?

http://youtu.be/wZeUpHkUr8Y

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

The different speeds of creators, critics , academics and audience are all part of a creative process, aren't they?

Yes, they are; but, in the case you offer, it's a creative response to an existing artefact (A Shakespeare play). Shakespeare didn't write his texts in ancient Greek, nor did he observe "the Unities" - they were redundant for his expressive/communicative needs. Similarly today it would be risible if someone wrote a play in 17th Century English using iambic pentameters and an assumption of the cultural (scientific and religious) values of that time.

Creators (including the responsive creatives you mention) can only reflect the cultural concerns of the times in which they live critically (in the full sense of that word) by formulating new means of expression and communication to reflect what is perceived to be new in their times. This has ever been the case - it is only today that such a statement could be considered provocatively controversial.

[Richard Barrett]

I wonder if this is enough feedback for Alex yet?

[Alison]

I wonder if this is enough feedback for Alex yet?

I am still awaiting Pabmusic's assessment!

[Alison]

Surprised nobody has mentioned the title of the work.