Tired of music?

[Pulcinella]

The soprano melody was written the day of Stravinsky’s funeral. But that’s the only connection .

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeands....artsfeatures1

I had a dim recollection of some sort of association/connection.

[edashtav]

The soprano melody was written the day of Stravinsky’s funeral. But that’s the only connection .

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeands....artsfeatures1

I thought Feldman had asserted that the work had a few personal recollections e.g. a phrase from Schoenberg’s Moses and Aron. Others have seen a relationship between his soprano melody and a passage in IS’s final work ‘Requiem Canticles’.

[Bryn]

I thought Feldman had asserted that the work had a few personal recollections e.g. a phrase from Schoenberg’s Moses and Aron. Others have seen a relationship between his soprano melody and a passage in IS’s final work ‘Requiem Canticles’.

Try http://www.interferencejournal.org/e...c-performance/ and search for "Feldman".

The tension between absence and presence can also be manifested via juxtaposition in the time domain, as gaps of silence. In several of Morton Feldman’s pieces the composer introduces lengths of silence between instrumental gestures. His piece Rothko Chapel (1971) for viola, solo soprano, chorus, percussion and celesta evokes absences on many different levels. The piece was written in memory of Feldman’s friend the artist Rothko who had committed suicide. As Alex Ross (2008, pp. 530-31) points out, the piece also refers to the ‘voice of God’ in Schoenberg’s Moses und Aron, to Stravinsky’s Requiem Canticles and a melody reminiscent of the synagogue. Instrumental passages provide a ‘frame’ for the silences: the presence of sound prepares the scene for an ‘absence’ manifest in periods of silence. In a sense, a phantom of sound spills over into the silent passages. The audience has the active role of imagining sounds, or the possibility of their occurrence.

[teamsaint]

I have wondered, idly, for some time, if what we ( ok people of my age maybe) think of as pop music has had its day,

Times change. Maybe the era of the pop music composer/ performer has had a good run, and something game-changing is just around the corner. I’ll admit that I may be applying my limited knowledge to white rock/pop, but 4th the generation Bowie re- treads can surely not be the future.

[teamsaint]

This is a very concise and accurate way of putting it, I think. And actually I myself did lose interest in checking out as many of the latest pop acts as possible at some point in my 20s. Occasionally I still find something by a new artist that attracts my attention but so much of it is derivative of this or that inventive act from the 1960s or 1970s that I can't be bothered to search actively for the experience, especially when there are so many people outside the pop music world who are creating new music all the time. (but not, as EH says, those responsible for current Proms commissions.)

In our media saturated world, and with a personal limit on time available, we all need to play the percentages to find the new music that excites us. There isn’t much room for unnecessary guilt in this process .
Interestingly, a 20 something colleague of mine who is a real music enthusiast ( mostly rock/ pop type stuff) was expressing the same view just recently that his contemporaries already have stagnating taste. Perhaps that is just how it is.
Soma, some might say.

[RichardB]

I have wondered, idly, for some time, if what we ( ok people of my age maybe) think of as pop music has had its day,

I would like to think that's more to do with one's age than with the music! but, every now and again, pop music needs to be shaken up by something new - punk rock, techno/drum&bass, hiphop etc. - and I don't think anything like that has happened for a while, not on a stylistic level anyway; on other levels, like the increasing diversity of the scene in many ways, change is taking place. As you say, something more fundamental might be just around the corner.

One of my thoughts about contemporary composition is that its domain of innovation has changed, from a search after new sounds towards a search after new ways of creating music, particularly in terms of collaboration and improvisation, since at a certain point a situation was reached where any sound (including no sound!) could, depending on context, be conceived and experienced as music. Pop music, on the other hand, since the early 1960s at least, has often been a matter of collaborative composition/performance, but its sounds tend to be relatively stereotyped - the advent of electronic instruments into pop music didn't have as much of a deep impact on the music as it did in "avant-garde" composition, since the synthesizers from their earliest appearance in pop music (for example in Abbey Road) played the same notes in the same sort of way as their predecessors, while in the hands of people like Stockhausen the electronic studio was a medium for creating entirely new forms of music. The implication of this for me is that these two practices, in so far as they can be neatly separated, have much to learn from one another, although unfortunately (unlike in the 1960s and 70s) the music world seems more compartmentalised and split into genres and subgenres than ever before.

[cloughie]

As someone who has always considered music an important part of my life. Recently I have gone through short periods of time when I’ve not wanted to play music, listen to music, sing or even think about music. These do not last long but I think it may be a reaction to the amount of unavoidable bad pop music that seems to be everywhere.

[french frank]

I have wondered, idly, for some time, if what we ( ok people of my age maybe) think of as pop music has had its day

There's an academic paper to be written here (I think there have been): what is "pop music" - not as music but as a concept? Or "pop culture"? Fragmentation makes it more and more difficult to sort out what one feels is worthwhile and what isn't. Where do I find the new? nothing that comes under this heading, or some bits of it but not other bits of it, worth trying if it's by X but nothing by Y &c.

I'm tired of music because most 'music' (a very inclusive term) which I hear (not 'which I seek out' or 'which is available' but which reaches my ears) I dislike/find tiresome. Any event which advertises "live music" is one to - mentally - avoid, simply because the odds are 99-1 that I shall find the live music a "positive minus" (ie not just neutral), because most things that are aimed at the majority (books, music, TV programmes) are unappealing. Sad

[cloughie]

There's an academic paper to be written here (I think there have been): what is "pop music" - not as music but as a concept? Or "pop culture"? Fragmentation makes it more and more difficult to sort out what one feels is worthwhile and what isn't. Where do I find the new? nothing that comes under this heading, or some bits of it but not other bits of it, worth trying if it's by X but nothing by Y &c.

I'm tired of music because most 'music' (a very inclusive term) which I hear (not 'which I seek out' or 'which is available' but which reaches my ears) I dislike/find tiresome. Any event which advertises "live music" is one to - mentally - avoid, simply because the odds are 99-1 that I shall find the live music a “positive minus" (ie not just neutral), because most things that are aimed at the majority (books, music, TV programmes) are unappealing. Sad

…and more than likely too loud!

[Dave2002]

For me I think something much more insidious is going on. Much of what we do is being tracked. Google is the obvious "culprit", but although it may be only one engine behind the tracking, it's not the only one. Even people who don't use computers or mobile phones are tracked by other means, and all the data is collated and fed into computer systems. Arguably the computer algorithms which do the tracking and analysis are "neutral" - in the sense that they are not deliberately trying to favour one type of behaviour over another, but what seems to happen is that certain activities are indeed favoured and this affects what we perceive. It's not just a question of "why is Amazon asking me if I'm interested in buying something which I 'might' think worthwhile, but at the same time not noticing that I had a delivery of one such item a week ago", but more that many things we do are being monitored, and then we are being pushed in certain directions. This is now happening at all levels, including the established and supposedly reputable serious media. We have heard about social media biasing people's political opinions, but this is also happening with mainstream media, and many of us are affected by this. OK - this is just my current working hypothesis - but it may be that that is happening in a lot of fields.

For an example of the kind of thing I'm trying to get across, consider making a phone call for service. Very probably the "music" being fed to you as you get increasingly annoyed with the terrible service provided by the non-responding company is going to be correlated with whether the call is terminated by the user, or whether it results in a sale or other "benefit" for the provider. That feedback will be used to determine the kind of music which you get in future service calls.

[Ein Heldenleben]

For me I think something much more insidious is going on. Much of what we do is being tracked. Google is the obvious "culprit", but although it may be only one engine behind the tracking, it's not the only one. Even people who don't use computers or mobile phones are tracked by other means, and all the data is collated and fed into computer systems. Arguably the computer algorithms which do the tracking and analysis are "neutral" - in the sense that they are not deliberately trying to favour one type of behaviour over another, but what seems to happen is that certain activities are indeed favoured and this affects what we perceive. It's not just a question of "why is Amazon asking me if I'm interested in buying something which I 'might' think worthwhile, but at the same time not noticing that I had a delivery of one such item a week ago", but more that many things we do are being monitored, and then we are being pushed in certain directions. This is now happening at all levels, including the established and supposedly reputable serious media. We have heard about social media biasing people's political opinions, but this is also happening with mainstream media, and many of us are affected by this. OK - this is just my current working hypothesis - but it may be that that is happening in a lot of fields.

For an example of the kind of thing I'm trying to get across, consider making a phone call for service. Very probably the "music" being fed to you as you get increasingly annoyed with the terrible service provided by the non-responding company is going to be correlated with whether the call is terminated by the user, or whether it results in a sale or other "benefit" for the provider. That feedback will be used to determine the kind of music which you get in future service calls.

I wish they would change the hold music as you suggest but I’m pretty sure no such algorithm is yet in use. The irritating guitar track that HMRC plays would now be the DIES IRAE from Verdi’s Requiem in my case.
Some call centres let you select your own music already….

[gradus]

As someone who has always considered music an important part of my life. Recently I have gone through short periods of time when I’ve not wanted to play music, listen to music, sing or even think about music. These do not last long but I think it may be a reaction to the amount of unavoidable bad pop music that seems to be everywhere.

Same here.

[Pulcinella]

I wish they would change the hold music as you suggest but I’m pretty sure no such algorithm is yet in use. The irritating guitar track that HMRC plays would now be the DIES IRAE from Verdi’s Requiem in my case.
Some call centres let you select your own music already….

Apple is one such, and their classical option is pretty good.
That said, they answer pretty quickly too, so you're not waiting long.

[Dave2002]

I wish they would change the hold music as you suggest but I’m pretty sure no such algorithm is yet in use. The irritating guitar track that HMRC plays would now be the DIES IRAE from Verdi’s Requiem in my case.
Some call centres let you select your own music already….

It is not impossible that some "service centres" don't really want to answer your call at all. They might deliberately play music which they think people don't like in the hope that they'll drop the call.

As an example of this, in the US I tried to contact a public service - was it the Immigration Service? What usually happens is that first you hear a recorded announcement about directing your call. Then you get a message saying "We'd like you to listen to one of our helpful messages before connecting you to an agent". What may then happen is that the whole thing goes into a sort of repeat loop, so that you don't actually get to speak to anyone. On one occasion I just randomly typed in a few numbers on our phone, then a surprised voice answered. "How did you get through to this number?" was the question. I had the feeling that I wasn't supposed to get through to anyone!

Not that HMRC would adopt such a strategy.....

[richardfinegold]

This is a very concise and accurate way of putting it, I think. And actually I myself did lose interest in checking out as many of the latest pop acts as possible at some point in my 20s. Occasionally I still find something by a new artist that attracts my attention but so much of it is derivative of this or that inventive act from the 1960s or 1970s that I can't be bothered to search actively for the experience, especially when there are so many people outside the pop music world who are creating new music all the time. (but not, as EH says, those responsible for current Proms commissions.)

I started losing interest in pop music when I was around 20 years old, in the mid seventies, as it all seemed to be a watered down repeat of what had preceded it. That era is now viewed as a Golden Age of pop music. However, to be fair, and with due respect to Living Composers such as RB, Classical Music has become a type of Museum Art. This is no longer the mid twentieth century when the likes of Shostakovich, Prokofiev, Bartok, Hindemith, etc were still active. Yes, there are times when I feel a real ennui with all types of Music