Howard Goodall on BBC Two

[Ian]

Your assertion here is about lack of cross fertilization, not adding to the gene pool etc, now you are backtracking to something completely different...

I’m not backtracking - merely pointing out where you have the context wrong, but also why I sympathise with the place you're coming from. However:

A feature of 19th C music, is composers finding individual voices through interacting with other more grass-roots based music. The various national schools is an obvious example and another is the appropriation of popular forms such as the Waltz. Despite this reliance (and, as it happens, cross fertilization) Classical music is set apart from other kinds of pop/folk Western music by its interest in, and use of, processes - a Symphony is much more of a construct than a folk dance. HG’s point was that in the 20C Classical music began to diverge from its grass-roots foundation. Obviously this is to a greater, lesser and non-existent extent depending on the composer. But, nevertheless I think that divergence clearly happened. Of course, developing new methods (like serialism) can add new genes into the pool but that is a different question. In any case I’m also saying that divergence is now less well marked.

[MrGongGong]

A feature of 19th C music, is composers finding individual voices through interacting with other more grass-roots based music. .

Surely a feature of 20th C music is composers finding that they don't live in a small world and finding resonances in other musics which might seem "alien" to the mainstream European / American audience ? the Gamelan influence is obvious as is the interest (which stems from what was going on in Vienna at the start of the 20th C) in the subconscious. The development of technologies that create opportunities for repeated listening (recording) or even working with purely electronic methods have affected many composers. It would (again !) be interesting to have a programme about these things from an ethnomusicological perspective.

[anotherbob]

Surely you understand that composers like Hildegard, Xenakis, Pérotin, Elgar, Beethoven, Carter, Bach, Sorabji, Byrd, Chopin, Mahler, Busoni, Roslavets, Haydn, Godowsky, Tallis, Alkan et al "made an effort" to write what they did, so by what conceivable logic might you come to assume that so such effort be reqired on the part of their listeners?

Nonsense.
How often would you like a listener to "try again" after finding a piece of music not to his liking?

[Ian]

Surely a feature of 20th C music is composers finding that they don't live in a small world and finding resonances in other musics which might seem "alien" to the mainstream European / American audience...

It certainly is.

[Serial_Apologist]

HG’s point was that in the 20C Classical music began to diverge from its grass-roots foundation.

Then he's clearly wrong. That divergence began at least 300 years earlier, when the diatonic major/minor "usurped" the other modes, and metrically music "dumbed down" to 4/4 and 3/4.

If anything, starting with the third movement of Tchaikovsky 5, subsequent composers restored many earlier and "foreign" elements and incorporated them, including "exotic" time signatures and non-European, non-tempered instruments. What modern composers have created, as Elliott Carter has pointed out, is more complex idioms than earlier times, redolent of their time. In this, they were building on what earlier composers had already started - reflecting their times.

[Bryn]

Then he's clearly wrong. That divergence began at least 300 years earlier, when the diatonic major/minor "usurped" the other modes, and metrically music "dumbed down" to 4/4 and 3/4.

If anything, starting with the third movement of Tchaikovsky 5, subsequent composers restored many earlier and "foreign" elements and incorporated them, including "exotic" time signatures and non-European, non-tempered instruments. What modern composers have created, as Elliott Carter has pointed out, is more complex idioms than earlier times, redolent of their time. In this, they were building on what earlier composers had already started - reflecting their times.

Beautifully put, if I may say so.

[Ian]

Well, he's right, isn't he? The "ordinary listener" does not want to have to make an effort. And the vast majority of listeners DO find atonal and serialist music virtually unlisteneable.

I don’t think it’s as simple as that. Although I broadly agree with HG’s view, I think its not so much a case of people finding A&S music unlistenable (well I don’t) but rather they prefer more tonality in their mix because of the greater range of expression that affords. In film scores for example a general audience find atonal music perfectly acceptable in certain situations. In the concert hall however the same audience are more concerned with how the music makes them feel (in the context of a shared experience) rather than how the music might plot a stressful emotional path through the subconscious (for example)

[ahinton]

Nonsense.
How often would you like a listener to "try again" after finding a piece of music not to his liking?

I didn't mention "liking" but, since you ask, that would be up to each individual listener in each individual case but would certainly not provide unequivocal and incontrovertible proof that all "atonal" and "serialist" works without exception do not appeal to the as yet unidentified "ordinary listener", let alone illustrate and demonstrate the specific grounds upon which this is supposedly the case.

Do you not think it worth making any effort to get the most out a piece even if you do "like" it and do you think that the efforts input into the creation of their works by composers such as Bach, Beethoven, Mahler, Schönberg, Carter, Xenakis et al is of any relevance to the listener in terms of whether or to what extent that listener might reasonably expect to need to devote similar efforts of his/her own to get the best out of them?

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

That's what I always say.

I knew something was wrong.

[jean]

You should always remember your Handel:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rSz6gaeHGlM

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

If anything, starting with the third movement of Tchaikovsky 5

? second movement of no 6?

[Mr Pee]

How about this? Definitely an improvement on the original......

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=Y41_gjk2V4c

[MrGongGong]

as is this Peester .......

(hats off to the moomin conductors )

[anotherbob]

Do you not think it worth making any effort to get the most out a piece even if you do "like" it

Should this read "even if you do not "like" it".?

..and do you think that the efforts input into the creation of their works by composers such as Bach, Beethoven, Mahler, Schönberg, Carter, Xenakis et al is of any relevance to the listener in terms of whether or to what extent that listener might reasonably expect to need to devote similar efforts of his/her own to get the best out of them?

No..... however it would be interesting to know what form such efforts might take.

[John Wright]

Excellent Mr Pee, just shows that music that is indigestible in the concert hall, or on the turntable, can be great fun on film.

We now need a Dudley Moore clip, where is it !!!!!

How about this? Definitely an improvement on the original......

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=Y41_gjk2V4c