The Sound and the Fury: a Century of Music.

[Boilk]

I shall be watching without prejudice.
I expect I may have heard "Schoenberg, Webern, Stravinsky and beyond." but I can't be sure.

I watched without prejudice, but boy, it wasn't easy. Some (IMHO idiotic) American talking head dismissed Schoenberg because his atonal music (vs his earlier tonal music) was apparently too difficult for the masses. This fool seemed not to know that all musical appreciation is a learning process.

[salymap]

There is another thread on this on The General Arts. Perhaps someone can tidy it up. Thanks.

[Nick Armstrong]

There is another thread on this on The General Arts. Perhaps someone can tidy it up. Thanks.

Your wish is my command.

[teamsaint]

The whole BBC 4 " Modern classical Music collection" seems a bit of a dog's dinner . However, watched "Riot at the rite", which I hadn't seen before, and it was diverting enough for an hour and a half.
Would have been good to have had a bit more focus on the musicians, and the music.

[JoeG]

I enjoyed the programme - we may all have opinions on the opinions of the talking heads but let's be fair - a three part series on 20th c music presented without gimmicks and with good unpatronising narration - I ani't gonna complain about that. I'd be well up for a repeat of C4 'Leaving Home' though as I thought that was superlative - got the book but as with most such works I am leaving it for my retirement!

[ahinton]

Here we go yet again - focussing on "the problem of modern Western 'classical' music" or "the problem with 20th century Western 'classical music"; as has been pointed out elsewhere (I think in a review of this appropriately named series, for its sound and fury indeed signifies very little), the only real problem with such music is people banging on and on perpetuating the myth that there is some kind of inherent problem with it. Whilst it was good to have George Benjamin on it, even the contributions of John Adams were largely wince-worthy and his bit about the finale of Schönberg's F# minor quartet just plain ridiculous other than as a personal opinion (and did we need personal opinions on something like this?)...

A "dog's dinner"? Well, neither having nor wanting a dog, I can't say but, if it is, then it probably contains traces of buteful (AH, so that's what Bernard Matthews meant!) horse meat (though some of if sounded more to be as though it was full of bovine something else, frankly)...

[teamsaint]

I'm not sure I am even on the right thread !!

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

did any one see the discussion and comparison of Fury and Goodall on The Review Show; very split opinions but the whole show was far more concerned with music than is usual .... 31 bus problem as they said, none for hours then a row of them ....

the more the somewhat merrier eh .. compared to painting music is a tad neglected on telly

[amateur51]

I enjoyed the programme - we may all have opinions on the opinions of the talking heads but let's be fair - a three part series on 20th c music presented without gimmicks and with good unpatronising narration - I ani't gonna complain about that. I'd be well up for a repeat of C4 'Leaving Home' though as I thought that was superlative - got the book but as with most such works I am leaving it for my retirement!

Good plan, JoeG

[ahinton]

did any one see the discussion and comparison of Fury and Goodall on The Review Show; very split opinions but the whole show was far more concerned with music than is usual .... 31 bus problem as they said, none for hours then a row of them ....

the more the somewhat merrier eh .. compared to painting music is a tad neglected on telly

Yes - I saw it.

Of course it's impossible to get much across within the space allotted to The S & the F and I don't think that anyone here's criticising it for leaving out this and that; Goodall's series is much larger but covers a much longer period of time, so the same can reasonably be said for that. The "problem" here is in trying to pigeon-hole things and over-simplify them as though the agenda is something along the lines of "well, it's maybe not so problematic as all that" whilst at the same time starting from the premise that it IS problematic; sweeping generalisation after sweeping generalisation relieved largely only by personal opinion and merely peppered with good sense - even if without other "gimmicks" and done in a not obviously patronising manner - doesn't really help people to get to grips with something that many of them have been told over and over again is "not for the masses", "difficult", "problematic" and so on. Composers simply do not compose to be difficult or obtuse or in ways designed to be listened to only by their peers and a handful of others, yet I am left with the suspicion that something along these lines is at least a part of the premise on which the series appears to be based.

But then I'm only a c**p*s*r so what do I know?...

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

Composers simply do not compose to be difficult or obtuse or in ways designed to be listened to only by their peers and a handful of others

i am less sure, Schoenberg and his school were uninterested in bourgeois audiences? ... Boulez?

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Here we go yet again - focussing on "the problem of modern Western 'classical' music" or "the problem with 20th century Western 'classical music" ... the only real problem with such music is people banging on and on perpetuating the myth that there is some kind of inherent problem with it. Whilst it was good to have George Benjamin on it, even the contributions of John Adams were largely wince-worthy and his bit about the finale of Schönberg's F# minor quartet just plain ridiculous other than as a personal opinion (and did we need personal opinions on something like this?)...

Exactly so - 'tho' not as wince-worthy as those of Whittaker. Why is Music treated so badly? David Attenborough's documentaries aren't peppered with Creationiists popping up to comment "Ah! Poor old Darwin: responsible for this mess -- and it's such a shame: his early work is really quite nice!" Brian Cox isn't interrupted by some neo-Newtonist blaming Einstein for all the "problems" of 20thCentury Physics ("Ah! Poor old Albert. And he did such splendid work in the Patents' Office.") It's so obviously and immediately ridiculous.

It's sad when one's "prejudices" turn out to be accurate prophecies, but the flaws and falsehoods in the first programme demonstrate that my fears voiced in#2 were totally justified. Everybody didn't spontaneously love Mozart and Beethoven (described as "the Romantic composers" at one point!), finding them "harmonious" and "beautiful" - nor did they immediately take Wagner, Bruckner and Brahms straight to their hearts. Schönberg's astonishing and gradual move into "Atonality" is too complex to be put down to the stress at the break-up of his first marriage - and what were the other composers also moving in this direction doing? Expressing their sympathy for AS's predicament?! (Nor was lifelong pro-monarchist AS rebelling against the Hapsburg Empire.)

It was a bad programme, full of misinformation, clichés and irrelevances of a standard that wouldn't pass the discussion stage on any other topic in the BBC Documentary Dept meeting rooms.

[ahinton]

i am less sure, Schoenberg and his school were uninterested in bourgeois audiences? ... Boulez?

Writing what you believe in and what you feel compelled to write regardless of how audiences might accept it or not is far from the same thing as deliberately writing against audiences; that was my point. There are limits to the extent to which one can "interest oneself" in audiences because one cannot know in advance of whom they might consist, but wilfully seeking to "give the public what it wants" is a path to nowhere; Chopin didn't do that in his late 'teens when writing his E minor piano concerto and you ought to read some of the vituperative abuse that he received at the hands of reviewers following his première of it!

[ahinton]

Exactly so - 'tho' not as wince-worthy as those of Whittaker. Why is Music treated so badly? David Attenborough's documentaries aren't peppered with Creationiists popping up to comment "Ah! Poor old Darwin: responsible for this mess -- and it's such a shame: his early work is really quite nice!" Brian Cox isn't interrupted by some neo-Newtonist blaming Einstein for all the "problems" of 20thCentury Physics ("Ah! Poor old Albert. And he did such splendid work in the Patents' Office.") It's so obviously and immediately ridiculous.

It's sad when one's "prejudices" turn out to be accurate prophecies, but the flaws and falsehoods in the first programme demonstrate that my fears voiced in#2 were totally justified. Everybody didn't spontaneously love Mozart and Beethoven (described as "the Romantic composers" at one point!), finding them "harmonious" and "beautiful" - nor did they immediately take Wagner, Bruckner and Brahms straight to their hearts. Schönberg's astonishing and gradual move into "Atonality" is too complex to be put down to the stress at the break-up of his first marriage - and what were the other composers also moving in this direction doing? Expressing their sympathy for AS's predicament?! (Nor was lifelong pro-monarchist AS rebelling against the Hapsburg Empire.)

It was a bad programme, full of misinformation, clichés and irrelevances of a standard that wouldn't pass the discussion stage on any other topic in the BBC Documentary Dept meeting rooms.

Hear, hear! And, as usual, who'd the real bad guy; why Schönberg, of course! That's gone on for so long now that it's almost become funny! (I daresay he'd have laughed at it himself had be been around today)...

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

not accusing just asking if some of modern music is 'situated' in protest and provocatively discordant is all ... no jazbo would find that in the least off putting or reprehensible ...