Howard Goodall on BBC Two

[jayne lee wilson]

HG said something like "serialism hasn't produced a single piece of music the ordinary listener can understand or enjoy. In 100 years."
I thought it might prove inflammatory here...

Well, what is an ordinary listener?
Was that me in 1973, borrowing Schoenberg/Webern/Berg from the local record library following a few cues from R3 or Gramophone, and finding an instinctive, excited response to it without any lessons or training in music or musicology?
Then finding music teachers or local amateur musicians rubbishing any mention of the names? Thanks of course to their education and ambient conversation of their circle... benefits of which I was spared.

HG may take "a personal view" but this proselytising ignorance might prevent an individual following their curiosity, as it smugly and stodgily underwrites a lazy status quo of accessibility. "Personal" is certainly not fresh or insightful here.

I discovered that 2ndVS music - a lifelong pleasure, like Mahler of Beethoven - because there was NOTHING IN MY WAY. "Oh, let's see what that's like..."
But now it's "if you like that try this", and the populists of classical music STILL narrowing the perspectives.

[Thropplenoggin]

HG said something like "serialism hasn't produced a single piece of music the ordinary listener can understand or enjoy. In 100 years."
I thought it might prove inflammatory here...

Well, what is an ordinary listener?
Was that me in 1973, borrowing Schoenberg/Webern/Berg from the local record library following a few cues from R3 or Gramophone, and finding an instinctive, excited response to it without any lessons or training in music or musicology?
Then finding music teachers or local amateur musicians rubbishing any mention of the names? Thanks of course to their education and ambient conversation of their circle... benefits of which I was spared.

HG may take "a personal view" but this proselytising ignorance might prevent an individual following their curiosity, as it smugly and stodgily underwrites a lazy status quo of accessibility. "Personal" is certainly not fresh or insightful here.

I discovered that 2ndVS music - a lifelong pleasure, like Mahler of Beethoven - because there was NOTHING IN MY WAY. "Oh, let's see what that's like..."
But now it's "if you like that try this", and the populists of classical music STILL narrowing the perspectives.

Right - surely the show should be called 'A Story of Music'. I'd appreciate a more detached, less simplistic account. People watching the programme would, I suspect, cope with that mild challenge.

[Bryn]

Some of the things he says drive me mad, but I do agree with you about this.

Ditto. These programmes are not aimed at the cognoscenti. Sure they are replete with what such folk find to be crass simplifications (offered, surely, for the sake of the general audience), but as a "personal view" of the history of music aimed at the BBC2 audience, I find much to praise in it. Yes, I reckon he misjudged what Wagner's stance towards Mahler might have been (the former, despite his rather bizarre brand of anti-Semitism, did, after all, work closely with a number of Jewish artists, etc.), but I found it somewhat refreshing that HG did not play the Wagner apologist game.

[MrGongGong]

Right - surely the show should be called 'A Story of Music'. I'd appreciate a more detached, less simplistic account. People watching the programme would, I suspect, cope with that mild challenge.

I would prefer

A Story of Western Music

"serialism hasn't produced a single piece of music the ordinary listener can understand or enjoy. In 100 years."

nope nothing at all ..............

http://www.valentinemusic.co.uk/home/wp-content/uploads/05-joe-lovano-tango.mp3

Of course, repeat until embedded as "fact"

[rauschwerk]

HG said something like "serialism hasn't produced a single piece of music the ordinary listener can understand or enjoy. In 100 years."

If that's what he did say, it was a dangerous statement because impossible to disprove. Who, after all, is 'the ordinary listener'?

That said, even Charles Rosen wrote, "The music that survives is the music that musicians want to play. They perform it until it finds an audience Sometimes it is only a small audience, as is the case so far for Arnold Schoenberg, and I am not sure if he will ever capture a large one, but he will be performed as long as there are musicians who insist on playing him. The most significant composers are those who gain the fanatical loyalty of some performers." (My italics).

I count myself a pretty devoted listener, but Schoenberg's serial music drives me mad with its relentless irregularity. I am not at all upset by the dissonance, though no doubt many people are. Who else would have written a suite of dances (Op. 25) that one cannot possibly dance to? Extraordinary.

Late Roberto Gerhard is another matter! He could write serial music that danced, and a lot else besides!

[Ian]

If that's what he did say, it was a dangerous statement because impossible to disprove. Who, after all, is 'the ordinary listener'?

HG was simply differentiating between an academic and/or cult audience and the regular concert goer.

That said, even Charles Rosen wrote, "The music that survives is the music that musicians want to play. They perform it until it finds an audience Sometimes it is only a small audience, as is the case so far for Arnold Schoenberg, and I am not sure if he will ever capture a large one, but he will be performed as long as there are musicians who insist on playing him. The most significant composers are those who gain the fanatical loyalty of some performers." (My italics).

Charles Rosen is ultimately right, but doesn’t take into account that professional musicians are often playing the music they are hired to play. To what extent do musicians perform serial music when they haven’t been paid to do so by institutions such as the BBC.

I count myself a pretty devoted listener, but Schoenberg's serial music drives me mad with its relentless irregularity. I am not at all upset by the dissonance, though no doubt many people are. Who else would have written a suite of dances (Op. 25) that one cannot possibly dance to? Extraordinary.

The problem I have with Schoenberg’s music (serial or otherwise) is that it always seems one third too long.

[amateur51]

HG was simply differentiating between an academic and/or cult audience and the regular concert goer.



Charles Rosen is ultimately right, but doesn’t take into account that professional musicians are often playing the music they are hired to play. To what extent do musicians perform serial music when they haven’t been paid to do so by institutions such as the BBC.



The problem I have with Schoenberg’s music (serial or otherwise) is that it always seems one third too long.

Young RAM pianist Karim Said played a Schoenberg/Webern/Berg programme as part of 'The Rest Is Noise' Festival at London's South Bank recently.

It was sold out.

The times they are a-changing

[MrGongGong]

The problem I have with Schoenberg’s music (serial or otherwise) is that it always seems one third too long.

Where ?

In some places I hear it I want it to go on forever
in others to stop
and late at night alone in the dark on headphones it's often exactly right

Maybe the "problem" that many people have with this music is it's lack of "portability" ?
but enough already

[Bryn]

Where ?

In some places I hear it I want it to go on forever
in others to stop
and late at night alone in the dark on headphones it's often exactly right

Maybe the "problem" that many people have with this music is it's lack of "portability" ?
but enough already

Moses und Aron could well do with being half as long again!

[ahinton]

Whilst it's clearly impossible for anyone to fulfil the brief of this series to everyone's satisfaction, the occasional well considered points that HG makes all too often risk being drowned in a sea of "who's a clever boy then?" type soundbites which do almost nothing other than detract from the story concerned.

The multiple misrepresentation of Wagner is quite a significant case in point. That Wagner learned a thing or two from Liszt (who didn't?!) is not in doubt and was worth pointing out, but HG well and truly overplayed his hand here; Liszt is still profoundly underappreciated, for sure, but HG's stance did little to help his own cause, let alone Wagner's or indeed Liszt's. No mention was made of Wagner's initial wish to become a playwright and a man of the theatre rather than a composer, the Tristan chord stuff was very poorly done (not least in its failure to point out that it was not the already familiar harmony itself but the contexts into which Wagner placed it that caused it to become such a talking point) and there was not a single reference to the extent to which some of Wagner's harmonic developments have certain of their roots in Chopin.

Whilst HG didn't shrink from the anti-Semitic issues (and he could, had he mentioned Chopin, have mentioned en passant that Chopin was also anti-Semitic, albeit not as vehemently and publicly so as Wagner), he utterly failed to make the vital point that Mahler revered Wagner and that the evidence of most of Schönberg's early works, especially Gurrelieder, suggests that the younger Austrian Jew revered him even more. Then, to cap all of that, the influence of Wagner on Richard Strauss was almost absurdly underplayed and, just for bad measure, we were told that the French composers in the aftermath of Wagner's death sought deliberately to distance themselves from Wagner's influence; not only no mention of the fact that even Debussy wrote of this as being no easy task (and, OK, Satie was as good an example of this in practice as any), but ALL French composers? Even Fauré, though light years from Wagner in many ways, responded to his influence and d'Indy - another most influential teacher - did so even more - but what about the young Schmitt and, above all, Magnard?

Lots of red pencil marks here, I fear...

And yes, who are these "ordinary" listeners" and how does HG or anyone else seek to identify them? It's as patronising and meaningless a term as "ordinary members of the public", "hard-working families", "middle England" (except where the Midlands of that country is specifically being referred to). JLW's answer here tells all (no surprise there, then!); it also throws a massive and vital spanner into the works of "the problem of modern music" that seems to afflict The Sound and the Fury even more than For Good and All and which has prompted one commentator on the former to observe that the only "problem" with "modern" (really? the past 125 years or so, anyone?) music is the people that go on and on about the problem of modern music as though it is problematic rather than music.

[Julien Sorel]

Where ?

In some places I hear it I want it to go on forever
in others to stop
and late at night alone in the dark on headphones it's often exactly right

Maybe the "problem" that many people have with this music is it's lack of "portability" ?
but enough already

This https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fzAFalLbXxg wherever and whenever I listen to it always seems to me to be shorter than I'd like it to be but also exactly the correct length. Now both Elgar's symphonies, on the other hand, as a matter of indisputable and objective fact last at least 50 minutes too long .

[ahinton]

Where ?

In some places I hear it I want it to go on forever
in others to stop
and late at night alone in the dark on headphones it's often exactly right

Maybe the "problem" that many people have with this music is it's lack of "portability" ?
but enough already

No, not enough yet; do tell us more of your thoughts on this!

I think that the problem some people have - or think that they have - with some of it is down to a lack of sufficient concentration arising from some pre-perceived inability to engage fully with it. One has only to think of the D minor string quartet - an almost three quarter of an hour unbroken stretch of music that is surely one of Schönberg's most demanding and elaborately complex pieces, for all that it's tonal - to realise that Schönberg's senses of precisely where to put what ideas, how and to what extent to work them and a thoroughgoing grasp of formal structure, architecture, proportion and duration are all highly developed indeed. However, one other problem for some people - particularly with a piece such as this - might be the perceived need to "get it" all in one go which, whilst it's not necessarily impossible, is clearly unnecessary!

[ahinton]

This https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fzAFalLbXxg wherever and whenever I listen to it always seems to me to be shorter than I'd like it to be but also exactly the correct length. Now both Elgar's symphonies, on the other hand, as a matter of indisputable and objective fact last at least 50 minutes too long .

Grrr! Ah, well, at least one might suppose that you'd excuse the Third Symphony from this accusation...

[MrGongGong]

This https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fzAFalLbXxg wherever and whenever I listen to it always seems to me to be shorter than I'd like it to be but also exactly the correct length. Now both Elgar's symphonies, on the other hand, as a matter of indisputable and objective fact last at least 50 minutes too long .

Also sprach Zarathustra could do with ending after the organ chord in bar 18 (I think that's the place but don't have the score to hand)
maybe that's a whole other diversion
pieces that you think should end before they do
OR
pieces that should go on and on and on (B & F#)

No, not enough yet; do tell us more of your thoughts on this!

briefly then (I actually have music to write today rather than admin nonsense )

IMV (note IN MY VIEW not Absolute or Universal or anything else like that at all)

Some music is very "portable", Bach, The Beatles, Jazz Standards, Dufay
it can exist in many contexts without loosing its essence or character
Jacque Loussier playing Bach is still Bach (as with Laibach et al)

other music is more "fragile"
(nothing to do with volume or dynamics)
whether it is effective or not depends much more on the context one experiences it in

Alvin Lucier's is a classic example but Webern is also like that (for me BUT not necessarily for YOU)
as is (again for ME) Bebop & Wagner.
In my experience Ligeti's Atmospheres is the piece where I have most felt this
I have many recordings and have been to many performances
but ALL the recordings are insufficient , they don't have the essence of the music even when played on outrageously esoteric equipment

In my experience one of the main reasons why people are put off listening to unfamiliar music is that they often hear it in a context where it is ineffective, the ability to "scale" (I think there is a real term for this but can't remember what it is ........... must get back to Sloboda ) environments, to be able to hear something in one and in your head immediately imagine what it sounds like in another and therefore have your brain "fill in" the gaps IS a skill that one learns over time. This is similar to when you hear teenagers playing music on their phones which is very bass heavy BUT the phone doesn't play those frequencies ? I think (and there are many similar psychoacoustic effects in Bells, Organ Combination stops etc) that they "hear" the bass that isn't physically there thus making the music (which often has ultra low 30Hz ish bass notes) more "portable".........

If one thinks that the ONLY function and context for music is "entertainment" then Webern will "fail"
If one thinks that the ONLY function and context for music is "intellectual" then Orbital will "fail"
Music has many contexts and functions

and so on .......

[Pabmusic]

Grrr! Ah, well, at least one might suppose that you'd excuse the Third Symphony from this accusation...

Elgar wrote only two sym... [we've been here before] ...