The death of western art music has been greatly exaggerated

[MrGongGong]

Of everyone? Got that wrong, I'm afraid. Go and have a cup of tea and read the thread from the beginning

I think our chimp chum misses the point that these folks (on the Scrote and chums site) are advocating that THEIR opinions and tastes are somehow superior whereas those of us who think that Eliane Radigue is the greatest composer in the history of the Universe are merely expressing a personal preference that we don't expect anyone else to agree with

[Lat-Literal]

I think our chimp chum misses the point that these folks (on the Scrote and chums site) are advocating that THEIR opinions and tastes are somehow superior whereas those of us who think that Eliane Radigue is the greatest composer in the history of the Universe are merely expressing a personal preference that we don't expect anyone else to agree with

Radigue is always cool - but the other side of the coin is that those who select out much of what might be termed non atonal and non serial over lengthy periods of time with a view to recommending that sort of stuff and that sort of stuff only are in many ways making a similar sort of statement to Reilly's (only in reverse and principally in terms of the music itself). Just because it is the music that appears to be speaking doesn't mean there aren't several tomes of dogma whispering through its every pore. And the same may apply to composition.

[P. G. Tipps]

The implication, intended or not, is clear enough there.

I was not 'implying' anything. I explicitly said Boulez was 'agnostic' and also explicitly referred to Catholic/ Christian composers.

I put forward Messiaen as an example of 'dabbling'. If my accompanying mention of Boulez's acknowledgement of the 'discipline' acquired at his Catholic childhood school sounded like he 'dabbled' also then I confirm that was certainly not my intention! It was merely to highlight Boulez's own acknowledgement that the 'discipline' acquired at his boyhood school stood him in good stead later in life as a serialist composer.

Admittedly, on reflection, I might have been better leaving Boulez out of the sentence altogether ...

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

I put forward Messiaen as an example of 'dabbling'.

And you were wrong to do so. He didn't "dabble", work, write, think, nor produce in any way Music that is Serial. His modal work sparked Boulez's serial Structures (or at least, the two minute piece that starts book one) but comparing the Boulez (or Babbitt's contemporaneous Three Compositions for Piano and the Composition for Four Instruments, it is clear that Messiaen's thinking and working are fundamentally different from those of Serialism. He no more "dabbled" with Serialism than Van Gogh "dabbled" in Cubism.

[P. G. Tipps]

I find it interesting that there has been no mention that the two greatest mass murderers of all time, Hitler and Stalin, both had views about Music that were not dissimilar to Reilly. Regrettably, both had the means at their disposal to enforce their taste upon others with dire consequences for the non adherant. It's interesting that instead of realizing this simple truth Reilly instead conflates Serialism with Totalitarianism ( or at least Communism)

Indeed and neither shared Reilly's liberal-economic politics or Catholicism, though Hitler, like Boulez, was brought up a Catholic and we all know the Young Stalin once entered a Russian Orthodox Seminary.

In adulthood they both considered themselves to be atheists and 'socialists', if of a rival kind ...

Comparing the views of Reilly to those of Hitler and Stalin is a bit like comparing Richard Dawkins to Attila the Hun.

[P. G. Tipps]

And you were wrong to do so. He didn't "dabble", work, write, think, nor produce in any way Music that is Serial. His modal work sparked Boulez's serial Structures (or at least, the two minute piece that starts book one) but comparing the Boulez (or Babbitt's contemporaneous Three Compositions for Piano and the Composition for Four Instruments, it is clear that Messiaen's thinking and working are fundamentally different from those of Serialism. He no more "dabbled" with Serialism than Van Gogh "dabbled" in Cubism.

Well, undoubtedly you know a lot more about the subject than I ... but ...

https://www.jstor.org/stable/854360?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents

[ahinton]

Catholics don't usually call themselves 'fundamentalists', which is why Tippsy put it in inverted commas I suppose. They don't use the term 'evangelical' much, either. Both of these terms are used more by/of Protestants who base their theology entirely on the Bible.

The difference between them and 'traditional' Catholics (as they like to think of themselves) is that they, the Protestants, will justify their abhorrence of homosexuality with reference to of scriptural (especially OT) texts, whereas Catholics like Reilly will invoke 'Natural Law', which they get ultimately from Aristotle, via St Thomas Aquinas.

But neither the Bible nor Natural Law has anything to say about the relationship between sprituality in general - or Christianity in particular - and music, though there have of course been attempts from time to time to abolish music from Christian worship altogether. And specifically Christian music has been purloined for other ends, as here.

Very much to the point, jean, especially insofar as you have risen to the fact that Reilly doesn't and cannot make those connections that he nevertheless purports to make because they simply are not there.

[ahinton]

Well, undoubtedly you know a lot more about the subject than I ... but ...

https://www.jstor.org/stable/854360?...n_tab_contents

The point here is that, at one point in his creative career (late 1940s/early 1950s), Messiaen embraced aspects of serialism; "embraced", not "dabbled in", for Messiaen was never a "dabbler" in anything. That this persuasion did not develop into something with which Messiaen decided to preoccupy himself for any great length of time thereafter also does not identify him as a serialist "dabbler" but as someone prepared to explore and, if necessary, pass through whatever persuasion/s happened to engage him at any given time. That said - and to return to the topic - I am not convinced that Reilly would have any more or less time for those handful of compositions in which Messiaen did seek to address serialist persuasions than for those many others in which he didn't but which nevertheless almost certainly contain some of what he'd likely regard as amelodic, aharmonic, unacceptably dissonant and the rest - and all that irrespective of any consideration of Messiaen's deeply felt "faith" or his humanity or indeed anything else about him.

No - it just doesn't cut the (Dijon) mustard.

[Richard Barrett]

Well, undoubtedly you know a lot more about the subject than I ...

Do you have access to JStor, scotty??? or did you just google "Messiaen" and "serialism" and copy-pasted the first link you found?

[MrGongGong]

Do you have access to JStor, scotty??? or did you just google "Messiaen" and "serialism" and copy-pasted the first link you found?

I suspect that "Prof Says" sent him the article

[ahinton]

I suspect that "Prof Says" sent him the article

Which one? - the lack-of-life-of-old-Reilly one or some piece about Messiaen's alleged "dabblings" in serialism?

[MrGongGong]

Which one? - the lack-of-life-of-old-Reilly one or some piece about Messiaen's alleged "dabblings" in serialism?

I'm sure that UCN has a Jstor account for it's "academics"

[P. G. Tipps]

Do you have access to JStor, scotty??? or did you just google "Messiaen" and "serialism" and copy-pasted the first link you found?

Yes, scotty ... but, tbh, I'm not too keen on Google and always use DuckDuckGo ...It only took a couple or so clicks, you know!

Even the Administrator and Hosts occasionally post links rather than wasting time on more words which invariably will fall on deaf ears or, more accurately, closed eyes and minds. And. oh, Mr GG is a veritable dab hand at links, he's the forum expert on links certainly if quantity rather than quality is to be the link yardstick.

Have you never, ever posted a link? Links are really quite easy when you finally get the hang of them, honestly!

[Lat-Literal]

All very interesting, I am sure, but that was all then and this is now. A part of the problem is that the then of it is so typically narrow. Gorecki, Tavener and Part; Part, Tavener and Gorecki. 7, 8, 9. 12, 11, 10. Yawn. What of Lauridsen - "I don't have to belong to the Catholic Church to be in love with Mary"; Whitacre's lovely but not always helpful underpinning of a spirituality to be pigeon holed as vague, fluffy and sweet; Pinkham - gay and who made extensive use of twelve-tone techniques with overtly religious texts; Will Todd who blueses it up for an Establishment version of religion whenever the Royals come calling; Rochberg who abandoned serialism on the grounds that he needed another form to express personal grief only subsequently to return to it; and the twins Cardew and Rzewski who were at least direct in putting political points across rather than mainly producing collapsing buildings subject to interpretation? To name but a few. I'm not seeing too many statements of the kind associated with the latter pair bursting from the music schools. That's in relation to, for example, Grenfell Tower. The commemorative pieces will come as they have to do for commissioned political reasons. But only expect the sort of thing that will sound like the world crashing to the ground. A little element of chinoiserie to appeal to the international television audience or perhaps something a bit, well, Korean, each counter-intuitively broadcast from the north.

Will there be a phoenix rising from the ashes in anything that could be perceived as a crescendo? Balance is important here. Expect yes in one piece and in the other piece no. Is non-western music in decline or could that be exaggerated too? What a question. It's probably in stasis from a commercial point of view but that shouldn't unduly worry the heads on the political side of Washington. Maybe I missed it but I haven't heard the new music that features the sine-wave frequency of an electronic car or the buzzing of bees and other endangered species or any imaginative depiction of what climate change will sound like or even the clamour of robot wars. The expansion of Garchik's "The Atheist Trombone" is still awaited - that is, the secular gospel movement. Overtly religious electronica that finds an equal place alongside the participation based choral tradition? Nope, not yet, again. To paraphrase Diana Ross, we're still waiting. The incorporation of a truly uncompromising bit of pipa in an English symphony. A new alphabetical technique for composition perhaps as complex as anything by Turing. Real estate built in slabs upon Bliss's colour. The real blues being given the sort of classical music context that until this time has only been provided by rock n roll. Someone actually getting to grips in music with the idea that spirituality can have the power of several ICBMs, not necessarily while being reliant on the fantasies of William Blake or Harry Potter.

Waiting.......waiting.......still waiting.

[kea]

I find it interesting that there has been no mention that the two greatest mass murderers of all time, Hitler and Stalin, both had views about Music that were not dissimilar to Reilly. Regrettably, both had the means at their disposal to enforce their taste upon others with dire consequences for the non adherant. It's interesting that instead of realizing this simple truth Reilly instead conflates Serialism with Totalitarianism ( or at least Communism)

Of course the people who do realise that simple truth aren't much better: Richard Taruskin has spun a great deal of conspiracy theorising about how serialism is basically the result of a covert CIA plot to counter Soviet influence in Europe, and really, Zhdanov was right and Prokofiev and Shostakovich's music gets much better after the government cracked down on their artistic "formalism", and if we're uncomfortable with that conclusion we should realise Western governments did the same thing in a more unofficial manner by orchestrating the artistic community's denial of opportunities to composers who wrote tonal music between 1950 and 1980, which totally happened guys, there are three sentences in Ned Rorem's autobiography that prove it.

(I have no idea why everyone keeps claiming that composers who wrote consonant music had zero opportunities and were excluded from artistic life for most of the twentieth century. Maybe they didn't get the artistic life they wanted, or respect from the people they were most envious of, but it's not like people like Britten and Bernstein and Malcolm Arnold etc. were exactly short of commissions and performances...)