Howard Goodall on BBC Two

[Serial_Apologist]

well chaps after all this i am still at a loss to understand what serialism is in addition to or other than what Mr G described it as ....... what subtlety or complexity i have missed above remains opaque .... no matter

S_A may well have something to say about serialism and jazz, my guess would be that it helped to make experimentation more the norm than conformance ... so e g George Russell could play with scales and modes etc ... but HG is more to the point with Debussy to my ears .... and the Russians (Rimsky) [Duke Ellington, Gil Evans and Charlie Parker were great listeners to modern classical music [forgive the oxymoron] ... i suspect that most jazz musicians are magpies, taking what they can make work and leaving the rest than 'adherents' of a method or discipline ... well at least until 'Jazz' was adopted in the Academy and perish the thought, they had to pass exams ...

Thanks for that "plug", Calum.

I'm not in any way as qualified as many on this board to pronounce about serialism, but here's a go fwiw, taking Schoenberg's development of it as one example, since he is widely taken to be the main originator and influence.

Schoenberg's application of serial construction should be mentioned as applying to pitch organisation alone, because others who came in his wake - Milton Babbitt in the States, but several among the "Darmstadt Group" including Boulez, Barraque, Stockhausen, Berio, Maderna and Nono - went further in applying serial ideas to parameters other than pitch, such as timbre, rhythm, dynamics, location and movement of sounds in space, clarity/opacity, etc etc... But Schoenberg arrived seemingly semi-spontaneously at his particular discovery as a consequence of the increasing compression that had taken place in his evolving musical language, away from post-Wagnerian "extravagance", towards forms of expression conveying momentary experience and especially psychological response to the unexpected, the unforseen, and psychological responses to non-logically explicable situations and occurrences the everyday mind would have difficulty in "computing"; in short, he found himself developing a language that encrypted musically the abnormal, or that for which there could be no accounting according to habitual modes of thought and feeling. Having harmonically taken non-resolution to the point at which dissonant combinations of intervals, in chords etc, amounted to the employment of pitch groupings containing few pitch repetitions, in a context best demonstrated in the little piano pieces Op 19 of 1911 - Webern had already been "miniaturising" along these lines - Schoenberg gradually concluded that, bereft of the poetic or dramatic contexts he had depended on for larger pieces, and wanting to declare his and his pupils' continuity with the Austro-Germanic musical lineage he never lost allegiance to, he sought various contrapuntal and variational solutions to the problem of building musical narratives analogous with and equivalent to those of preceding tonal composers, going back all the way to late Beethoven and especially Bach, who had evolved contrapuntal formal complexes combining vertical and horizontal lines in various juxtapositions, including inversion, augmentation (expansion) and diminution (contraction), and eventually settled on expanding these ideas to take on board retrograde and retrograde inversion (did Bach use retrograde someone?) in the freed harmonic environment that allowed for integrity in terms of pitch sequencing. I.e. unlike Bach, or late Beethoven (of the quartets), atonality meant not having to comply, as Bach in the Goldberg Variations had had to, with "harmonic rectitude", when, say, combining a melodic statement with its reversal or upsiding.

I might come back and have a go at applications of serialism in jazz, but it really has played a minor role in jazz - as Evan Parker has said, atonality has been a more fruitful area within which to operate from the improviser's pov... for all sorts of reasons too complex to go into here - though I wouldn't mind betting that the "unexpected" has some kind of bearing common to both disciplines/ aesthetics.

[Ian]

People are queuing up to lament the inaccessibility of the kind of modernist or contemporary music they don't approve of while advertising their own wares as listener-centred.

Presumably you’re referring to Howard Goodall. If so, that’s quiet a spin you're putting on his comments. My reading is that he gave serial music short shrift because is has noticed that hardly anyone likes the stuff. However, he did acknowledge its relevance as an “academic revolution” with a “cult following”. Surely that is a reasonable view that doesn’t necessarily imply “disapproval” or indeed the promotion of Howard Goodall the composer. (Despite his fame I’ve ever heard anything by HG apart from a handful of pretty inventive TV sig tunes.)

Surely HG’s position regarding Schoenberg cannot be assessed on the grounds of any individual’s likes and dislikes?

[MrGongGong]

Thanks for that "plug", Calum.

I'm not in any way as qualified as many on this board to pronounce about serialism, but here's a go fwiw, taking Schoenberg's development of it as one example, since he is widely taken to be the main originator and influence.
.

Great stuff

(You might have to write a Ladybird book version for the folks who struggle with the idea of "pitch organisation" )

[Serial_Apologist]

Great stuff

(You might have to write a Ladybird book version for the folks who struggle with the idea of "pitch organisation" )

Thanks!

How metre and rhythm gets affected by what happens to harmony and cadences, post-"Tristan", post-"Boris" (not that one), and how what effect that harmony has on rhythm, 4/4 etc., is also of interest in the, ahem, "jazz context". I could have mentioned that as well, but this has already drifted way off-topic!

As to what Ian has written in #302, I could recount (for the third time on these boards) one experience of introducing serial music to a totally musically unversed, but nevertheless enthused and entranced 18-year old, which you could probably enumerate into multiples of thousands from your experiences and dealings with young musickers, MrGG.

[ahinton]

ahinton, I think you could argue your way out of winning the lottery if you so chose.

Why on earth would I want to do that?!

When I used the words "significant" and "fanatical loyalty", I was quoting Rosen.

I know - which is why in part I agreed with you (in case you hadn't noticed!)...

Perhaps I could have chosen a better example than Alkan, who did indeed influence a whole generation of pianist-composers. However, the general point still stands, viz that it is ludicrous to suggest, as Rosen does, that only those composers with a limited following of fanatics can lay claim to be significant.

I cannot disagree with that, for all that I usually otherwise find Rosen excellent.

[teamsaint]

What a brilliant thread. Thanks .

I need to take a sabbatical.

Work really is just getting in the way now.

[Julien Sorel]

I wasn't referring to HG, I was referring to your remark about the defensiveness surrounding musical modernism and aspects of contemporary music.

The Gramophone recently had an editorial piece along the lines I suggested, Alex Ross's Rest Is Noise articulates a narrative where the Cold War is fought over again with heroic American minimalists rescuing music from grim Darmstadtians, the BBC's Sound & Fury gives John Adams yet another chance to repeat a related text, James MacMillan has a Telegraph blog where he goes on about his marginalisation at the hands of a bunch of Commie musical enemies of ordinary audiences (in between announcing his next LSO commission). Etc.

[Ian]

As to what Ian has written in #302, I could recount (for the third time on these boards) one experience of introducing serial music to a totally musically unversed, but nevertheless enthused and entranced 18-year old, which you could probably enumerate into multiples of thousands from your experiences and dealings with young musickers, MrGG.

Surely HG’s position regarding Schoenberg cannot be assessed on the grounds of any individual’s likes and dislikes?

In order to undermine HG's position I think you need to do something like point to record sales in the hundreds of thousands - rather then the typical low hundreds or less.

[Ian]

The Gramophone recently had an editorial piece along the lines I suggested, Alex Ross's Rest Is Noise articulates a narrative where the Cold War is fought over again with heroic American minimalists rescuing music from grim Darmstadtians, the BBC's Sound & Fury gives John Adams yet another chance to repeat a related text, James MacMillan has a Telegraph blog where he goes on about his marginalisation at the hands of a bunch of Commie musical enemies of ordinary audiences (in between announcing his next LSO commission). Etc.

Sounds like everyone is on the defensive, and coming from an academic background I can see why. The classical composer's route to the audience is limited and tightly controlled by 'factions' and various aesthetic-led vested interests. It's not surprising things get a bit bloody now and again.

[Serial_Apologist]

I wasn't referring to HG, I was referring to your remark about the defensiveness surrounding musical modernism and aspects of contemporary music.

The Gramophone recently had an editorial piece along the lines I suggested, Alex Ross's Rest Is Noise articulates a narrative where the Cold War is fought over again with heroic American minimalists rescuing music from grim Darmstadtians, the BBC's Sound & Fury gives John Adams yet another chance to repeat a related text, James MacMillan has a Telegraph blog where he goes on about his marginalisation at the hands of a bunch of Commie musical enemies of ordinary audiences (in between announcing his next LSO commission). Etc.

We "commies" weren't "supposed" to like anything "modern" outside of Shostakovitch post-5th symphony, Kabalevsky, etc., once upon a time. One wishes our anti-modernist critics would agree with each other on something, at least, for all time, like..., diatonic music?

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Not sure ascertaining that the right word is in play counts as pedantry...

It seems to count as "unbelievable self-righteousness and snobbery" in some people's vocabulary.

So, let's be pedantic: as Sir Velo correctly points out, "Serialism" sort-of dates from 1923, so, strictly speaking, it's not produced a single work that appeals to anybody who doesn't like serial works for Ninety years, not one hundred. But why let accuracy spoil the opportunity to voice a good prejudice.

Oops! There I go again, being nasty about a series that "tries to do good" and is better than Blue Peter. Unbelievable of me.

[Julien Sorel]

Record sales or sales of tickets for concerts don't happen by magic: they are arrived at via marketing, advertising, promotion, and - as you say - control by vested interests. The vested interests in control are innately hostile to the complex, the difficult or the plain different. That applies just as well to non-classical music as it does to classical music. It doesn't mean that people wouldn't respond positively to "the complex, the difficult or the plain different." It means they don't want people to respond positively to them.

The endless repetition of the line that modern classical music is the preserve of an elitist clique, the John Adamses etc. have opened up the market is circular and self-fulfilling. Because the people who write and say these things control the market.

[Serial_Apologist]

Surely HG’s position regarding Schoenberg cannot be assessed on the grounds of any individual’s likes and dislikes?

In order to undermine HG's position I think you need to do something like point to record sales in the hundreds of thousands - rather then the typical low hundreds or less.

The same vested interests you have subsequently referred to constantly plug one sort of 20th century composer, the immediate impact or immediately memorable type, against those that take more effort to appreciate - even in an already pop and pap-saturated market - and so you really shouldn't be surprised when comparing sizes of record sales, Ian.

[Serial_Apologist]

Record sales or sales of tickets for concerts don't happen by magic: they are arrived at via marketing, advertising, promotion, and - as you say - control by vested interests. The vested interests in control are innately hostile to the complex, the difficult or the plain different. That applies just as well to non-classical music as it does to classical music. It doesn't mean that people wouldn't respond positively to "the complex, the difficult or the plain different." It means they don't want people to respond positively to them.

The endless repetition of the line that modern classical music is the preserve of an elitist clique, the John Adamses etc. have opened up the market is circular and self-fulfilling. Because the people who write and say these things control the market.

You said it first, JS.

[amateur51]

Record sales or sales of tickets for concerts don't happen by magic: they are arrived at via marketing, advertising, promotion, and - as you say - control by vested interests. The vested interests in control are innately hostile to the complex, the difficult or the plain different. That applies just as well to non-classical music as it does to classical music.

The endless repetition of the line that modern classical music is the preserve of an elitist clique, the John Adamses etc. have opened up the market is circular and self-fulfilling. Because the people who write and say these things control the market.

That makes sense to me but doesn't the subversive presence of youtube, Spotify, et al mean that via a thread like this an enthusiastic amateur (ahem!) can be encouraged to sample 'difficult' pieces without being scared off by the 'd' word and if persuaded, similarly enthuse her or his chums?

It's worked for me!