Saddos ....

[Joseph K]

You've got me listening to some techno!

Although if truth be told, I dance more instinctively and joyfully to things like this: https://youtu.be/1PymMOnGuHs

Getting back on topic: I've realised some time ago that a fair amount of music I listened to in my teens I no longer want to listen to because it's miserable. Bands like The Cranberries, Verve, The Smiths. It's not that I now consider the music no longer good - although there might be an element of that actually, it's just that this element is intertwined with the kind of thoughts and feelings it expresses. I do look back - or rather listen back - and think it doesn't sound half as sophisticated or spellbinding as I thought it did at the time - I'm thinking of something like Radiohead's Ok Computer, but then I think Radiohead explored some different textures - some are really interesting in the context of a rock group, like this: https://youtu.be/XX4EpkR-Sp4 with its massed string clusters, or 'Pyramid Song'. Funnily enough some of my close family dismissed Radiohead at the time for being 'miserable' but I thought and still think that they have a tendency towards the euphoric more than the guy singing "I need to hear some sounds that recognise the pain in me, yeah" (That's from The Verve's 'Bittersweet Symphony' )

[cloughie]

Your original question was: "is there a finite limit on originality?" - which I took to mean: will a point be reached where originality is no longer possible? But it seems that wasn't what you were asking! Sorry, I got the wrong end of the stick there.

So what you were asking was "is there a limit to the originality a single thing can have?" My answer to that one is that I don't think the idea of "originality" lends itself to such a pseudo-quantitative approach. Newness is always relative to a certain context, in which it creates new insights. For example: you could say that if in 1820 someone had invented Schoenberg's twelve-tone technique it would have been even more "original" than it was when he devised it a hundred years later. But there's no way anyone could have had such an idea in 1820 because there was no context for it. So I don't think a creative musician can decide to produce something "original", they can only decide to develop their individual way of hearing and thinking to the point where their insight into their particular context produces something new. "Original" is often interpreted as "not like anything else", but it's actually more complex than that. "Not like anything else" is the easy part.

OK who were the ‘originals’ of the past - based on the sound they produced, not on an analysis of their notes - but no doubt in the C18th was JS Bach followed by Haydn who firmly put the Symphony on the musical map and Mozart for the range of what he did in too few years, certainly developed the Concerto - bringing us the big concerto ( whether on fortepiano or a C20th concert grand) Into C19th undoubtedly Beethoven developed the Symphony into a bigger scale and was copied and strengthened by others but was Berlioz ever given the credit for the phenomenally original sound he produced in his Symphonie Fantastique. Not only did he provide the template for the next 100 years of French music - Had I been told this music was written in 1930 not 1830 I would have not been phased - where in 1830 did those musical ideas come from? The ‘Scenes aux Champs’ is pure impressionism. That finale is just amazing! Who else was writing music like this in 1830? Who were his musical influences - sure he was inspired by a beautiful woman, Harriet Smithson and music was the food of love but those musical sounds…
Beyond tvhis who were originals and who were very clever composers building on what others have done?

[Joseph K]

based on the sound they produced, not on an analysis of their notes

Could you explain what you mean by this distinction?

[cloughie]

Could you explain what you mean by this distinction?

Simply that I listen to the music and not take the score to pieces!

[Serial_Apologist]

Beyond this who were originals and who were very clever composers building on what others have done?

Most of the composers dominating concert programmes, insofar as they innovated in the context and on the bases provided by predecessors - far too many to list - some more than others, obviously. Of the post-Wagnerians, for instance, Schoenberg went further than Mahler, Schmidt or Strauss; Debussy saw Stravinsky as having progressed further than himself, telling him so and describing himself as "descending the other side of the hill". But I seem to detect something barbed in your use of "very clever".

[Joseph K]

Simply that I listen to the music and not take the score to pieces!

Ok, but like Serial Apologist I detect something barbed or dismissive - in this case about musical analysis - as though 'taking the score to bits' is some how necessarily an arbitrary activity unrelated to the sound of the music.

[RichardB]

OK who were the ‘originals’ of the past - based on the sound they produced, not on an analysis of their notes

It's heartening to see you insist on emphasising "the sound they produced", since usually you're claiming that the actual sound a composer produced, by way of the instruments that sound was produced on, is relatively unimportant! - even though you then immediately go on to talk about Mozart "bringing us the big concerto (whether on fortepiano or a C20th concert grand)" when Mozart cannot possibly have brought anybody anything on the latter instrument.

was Berlioz ever given the credit for the phenomenally original sound he produced in his Symphonie Fantastique. Not only did he provide the template for the next 100 years of French music - Had I been told this music was written in 1930 not 1830 I would have not been phased - where in 1830 did those musical ideas come from?

Berlioz is very often given the credit for being one of the most original composers of all time, although his music too emerged from a particular context in time and place. The influence of various composers is clear enough - primarily Beethoven, Weber and Gluck, as well as less well-known figures such as Lesueur - but his most striking innovation was to bring together the drama and colour of opera and the form of the symphony. Having said this, his Symphonie fantastique is somewhat cobbled together from preexistent materials originally intended for other works, connected somewhat tenuously by having the "idée fixe" inserted into each one and by his fanciful programmatic narrative. For example the main theme of the "Scène aux champs" was recycled from his early Messe solennelle (the score of which was lost until 1990), and the "Marche au supplice" was originally intended for the opera Les francs juges which was never finished. Sure it's possible to play the "Scène" as if it's "pure impressionism", but, as conductors from JEG onwards have demonstrated, that was not the sound he actually produced, to use your term. The connection with Beethoven's 6th Symphony is much stronger.

Beyond this who were originals and who were very clever composers building on what others have done?

As I said before, every "original" is someone who makes a bold and innovative reinterpretation of the materials they inherit, in other words someone who builds something new on what others have done. No artist ever creates in a vacuum. While the "great men" approach to history in general is no longer the exclusive focus it once was, it still seems to hang on in the way musical history is talked about.

[Ein Heldenleben]

OK who were the ‘originals’ of the past - based on the sound they produced, not on an analysis of their notes - but no doubt in the C18th was JS Bach followed by Haydn who firmly put the Symphony on the musical map and Mozart for the range of what he did in too few years, certainly developed the Concerto - bringing us the big concerto ( whether on fortepiano or a C20th concert grand) Into C19th undoubtedly Beethoven developed the Symphony into a bigger scale and was copied and strengthened by others but was Berlioz ever given the credit for the phenomenally original sound he produced in his Symphonie Fantastique. Not only did he provide the template for the next 100 years of French music - Had I been told this music was written in 1930 not 1830 I would have not been phased - where in 1830 did those musical ideas come from? The ‘Scenes aux Champs’ is pure impressionism. That finale is just amazing! Who else was writing music like this in 1830? Who were his musical influences - sure he was inspired by a beautiful woman, Harriet Smithson and music was the food of love but those musical sounds…
Beyond tvhis who were originals and who were very clever composers building on what others have done?

I think it’s much more helpful to look on musical development as process of continual development rather than a series of “original “ composers. I don’t think there are the “paradigm shifts “ that you get in scientific Revolutions happening in music . Composers spend a lot of time studying the works of past composers - often filling in and completing Palestrina and Bach. It’s not something that novelists or poets do , though some painters will do imitative work. There’s a huge weight of tradition that composers may draw on or kick against .I would describe Beethoven’s ninth as more “original” than the Berlioz (whatever “original” means ) but we know Beethoven spent a lot of time studying Palestrina in the lead up to writing it and his influences can be detected . But there is still something “ original “ in the harmonic texture of the work and indeed in the introduction of voices. But voices with instruments as a texture is as old as music itself.

[gradus]

Simply that I listen to the music and not take the score to pieces!

Me too. I enjoy reading other people's analysis and musings on music but its not my way in.

[RichardB]

Me too. I enjoy reading other people's analysis and musings on music but its not my way in.

What makes you think it's anyone's "way in"?

[RichardB]

Composers spend a lot of time studying the works of past composers - often filling in and completing Palestrina and Bach. It’s not something that novelists or poets do , though some painters will do imitative work.

Not all composers do that; I would say that in general creative musicians do no more of it than novelists or poets (a lot less than the poets I've known, actually!) - it isn't a necessary condition to participating in the "process of continual development" that you mention. Every creative musician in every period cannot help but be surrounded by whatever stage that development has reached. Taking the case of Berlioz, he didn't really study any music that was more than a few decades old when he started his composing work, as can be heard by his stab at making something archaic-sounding in L'Enfance du Christ, and the same would be true of almost every composer from the middle ages to the 18th century or so. The "Palestrina style" wasn't a thing of the past in Beethoven's day but something every composer of church music would encounter in their everyday work, as a living tradition.

[jayne lee wilson]

Me too. I enjoy reading other people's analysis and musings on music but its not my way in.

AS RB implies, any "analysis and musings" aren't at all necessarily an entry point. My own reading and research have usually followed the emotional involvement in the music, not preceded it.

I've no musical training, so I adored Brahms long before I began to notice (often prompted by Gramophone Reviews) his profoundly inventive and innovative use of classical formal models, and then sought out various books and articles about that. A Saturnalian present to myself this year is the Cambridge Brahms Companion, which looks every bit as enticing as the Bruckner one....(including a chapter about conducting Brahms by....Roger Norrington...)...

[RichardB]

As RB implies, any "analysis and musings" aren't at all necessarily an entry point.

Quite. I would imagine that almost everyone's love of music starts from and is always centred on the sensual experience (which might include playing/singing as well of course, and indeed composing), and the "analysis" arises from wanting to delve deeper. When composers talk or write about their work it's often thought that one needs first to have understood what they've said or written in order to appreciate the music. Not at all. The idea is that if someone appreciates the music they might be interested to know more about how it came to be and what it's made of. No amount of explanation has ever caused me to appreciate music that I otherwise find unattractive. The enthusiasm of friends and colleagues, though, is a different matter!

[gradus]

What makes you think it's anyone's "way in"?

I thought perhaps wrongly that much of the writing and discussion about performances on here was intended to attract the attention and interest of others and by description to provide a way in to a composer or performer. I believe its also part of the thinking behind R3's current approach to broadening the appeal of classical music and attracting listeners eg The Listening Service.
For what its worth I don't think I can explain my own way in, it just seemed to be a natural attraction to music.

[RichardB]

Back to sadness though.

Surely there are many different dimensions to the relationship between music and emotion. Nobody can really know what a creative musician is feeling when they make music that embodies some particular emotional state or other, nor does it really matter; and music that seems to embody "sadness" doesn't necessarily evoke that emotion in the listener's mind, nor does that matter. Giving in to what seems to be the emotional character of music is only one way to listen and perhaps a relatively passive one. "Sadness" as such is a highly complex thing the more closely you try to look at it. (Is it possible to really appreciate what Berlioz put into his Symphonie without having experienced the drug-induced states it invokes? Does that matter? A friend and I once listened to it under the influence of hallucinogens, which was one of the more frightening things I've experienced, especially when bells from the church down the road "joined in" with the last movement, but I'm not sure whether this deepened my insight into Berlioz's work!) Sometimes the emotional dimension of music seems to me an extremely complex issue, never to be unravelled, while at other times it seems searingly straightforward and direct. Even the most seemingly abstract serial composition like Webern's op.21 can have a strong emotional impact.

(oops, I meant to write a new post and I just overwrote my previous one! - so it goes - but the point I was previously trying to make was, in response to gradus, that "much of the writing and discussion about performances on here" is indeed intended to attract the attention and interest of others, but such a "way in" is a matter of sharing enthusiasm, rather than, as Cloughie suggested, a matter of "pulling the score to pieces")