The Sound and the Fury: a Century of Music.

[MrGongGong]

At the end of episode 2 they showed that the "Minimalists" are coming, so there will be no Britten (or Tippett) especially we've had Max and Birty.

In fact next week's programme could not be more predictable, it's the dumbed-down, darling pentaptych of: Glass, Reich, Adams, Part and Taverner. Dumbed down, that is, in the bigger musical scheme of things.

How predictable and lazy these programme-makers are. I hope future generations don't look back to our era and regard these five as the classical music icons of our age.

How extraordinary that you are able to form an opinion about something you haven't seen yet.
Any chance of a tip for the 3:30 at Cheltenham ?

[ucanseetheend]

There has been numerous TV Docs about the change from tonal to atonal and the "blurred area in the middle". They were better than this.I think this is for the uninitiated and doesnt really go into much depth.

[MrGongGong]

I think that (as with The Rest Is Noise) that if one expects a kind of "Groves Dictionary" of 20th Century music then one will be disappointed. This is a very particular journey and sequence, there are many other ways of traveling.

[Nick Armstrong]

How extraordinary that you are able to form an opinion about something you haven't seen yet.
Any chance of a tip for the 3:30 at Cheltenham ?

[Boilk]

How extraordinary that you are able to form an opinion about something you haven't seen yet.
Any chance of a tip for the 3:30 at Cheltenham ?

I haven't formed an opinion about the program, but was simply saying how predictable (based on the BBC Four precis of the program) the choice of "modern-day" composers it will focus on.

GongGong's characteristic sarcasm seems more predictable than any horse race.

[amateur51]

I think that (as with The Rest Is Noise) that if one expects a kind of "Groves Dictionary" of 20th Century music then one will be disappointed. This is a very particular journey and sequence, there are many other ways of traveling.

Good to get more George Benjamin & MTT, nice to be reminded of Punch and Judy, Max was suitably ... Max and Birtwistle was laughing - some on here will be shocked

[Quarky]

AS arrived at his own 12-tone method as a consequence of following the inner consequences of having shaken off the residues of post-Wagnerian, post-Brahmsian harmonic thinking over a period predating even the abandonment of tonality in the "Hanging Gardens" song cycle of 1908. Growing preponderance of notes "foreign to the prevailing key", coupled with greater concision, occasioned initially by Schoenberg's turn to a more compressed form of expression, and later by the need he felt to apply formally cohering principles to wayward gestures inspired by inner feelings previously unexpressed by tonal means, led to the discovery that he had been building micro-complexes which figured more of the total chromatic, both vertically and horizontally, without fewer pitch repetitions, spontaneously. From this, as he said, came the idea of serial pitch ordering, and he found himself able, as he said to a friend, to compose with the same spontaneity that he had felt in his youth.

!

Nice to see you back on the boards, S_A, and your as always informative comments.

I missed the BBC4 series, having given up on TV as a worthwhile medium, but your comments got me thinking again about the transition from "anything goes" atonality, into what must be a strict formalistic method of serial composition.

It seems this was more to do with Schoenberg's personality, rather than any inevitable rule of nature, such as gravity. Alex Ross's book I think gives quite a good account of this transitional process, and p.194 refers to "Schoenberg had hit on the notion of twelve-tone music after enduring an extended period of creative confusion. The "extreme emotionality" of atonal composition, in his own words, had exhausted him, and he needed a less fraught , more orderly way of working." Well, don't we all! But as a guy that enjoyed playing 3-dimensional chess, Arnie must have found serialism processes simplicity itself. And as I understand matters, the French school took serialism to its logical limits.

But as regards the half-serious listener such as myself, I am not sure that the strict laws of serialism are observable in a composition (I believe Bach may have had some internal mathematical method of composing). What matters to the listener (me) is the stretch required to appreciate these novel works, and perhaps in retrospect atonality is more important than serialism. Maybe music such as free jazz and improv is the inheritor of AS's work?

[Stephen Whitaker]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/tv/posts/The-Sound-And-The-Fury-Pioneers-of-minimal-music

Although I am an enthusiast for much that is labelled minimalist in the music of the past 50 years
somehow the prospect of the final programme doesn't seem like a good way to end the series.

[ardcarp]

The Sound and the Fury BBC4

OK I know there's a thread about this somewhere, but I can't find it. Having watched last night's episode, I feel moved to say what a great series this has been. Above all, BBC4 needs to be given a hearty pat on the back for screening what must be a 'minority interest' programme...and running it concurrently with Howard Goodall's more popular (populist?) series on BBC2.

If someone can direct me to a discussion...thanks!

[french frank]

If someone can direct me to a discussion...thanks!

It's here - I will merge the threads - there seem to be strong views.

[Nick Armstrong]

It's here - I will merge the threads - there seem to be strong views.

Ta FF - was just hunting around, I couldn't find it either!

Though someone had made it invisible to hosts

[Mary Chambers]

At the end of episode 2 they showed that the "Minimalists" are coming, so there will be no Britten (or Tippett) especially we've had Max and Birty.

In fact next week's programme could not be more predictable, it's the dumbed-down, darling pentaptych of: Glass, Reich, Adams, Part and Taverner. Dumbed down, that is, in the bigger musical scheme of things.

How predictable and lazy these programme-makers are. I hope future generations don't look back to our era and regard these five as the classical music icons of our age.

It lived up, or rather down, to that, didn't it? Oh dear.

[Bryn]

Overall I found the series to be of pretty low standard, plumbing the depths of inanity in its final throes. Adams rotated 180 degrees from the position he took but a few weeks ago on Radio 4 re. Schoenberg, (where he proclaimed his love for Arny's music). The series was simply too shallow to get in a fury over, however.

[ardcarp]

I seem to be in a bit of a minority here. I just can't get over the sheer existence of a programme dedicated to 'modern' music. I can understand Mary C's thoughts about who wasn't included!

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

i saw the final part last night ..... could not possibly comment on the intricacies of modern music but this series and the part of the book read before sprog nicked it for her studies leaves me disenchanted with much of the dogmatism involved in the Darmstadt tradition; and wondering how such a nice chap as Benjamin appeared, could tolerate that didact Boulez [now my black beast in chief] ... what an innocent Cage appeared to be .... and how dangerous and mischievous too .... the sublime works of Morton Feldman were not at all as familiar to me as they are going to be ...

for all the fuss and the buzz i found minimalism Glass and Reich etc boring then and now ... but i have been profoundly impressed at the spiritual nourishment my partner finds in Part and Taverner ... as well as the feeling i find in the Feldman Elegy just not the thing for the metrosmarts eh ...

and also very struck by the complete [?] absence of reference to Britten

so now we have had the view from Manhattan perhaps we could have a different view of the growth of music in the last 100 plus years ... [oops is that part of HG's brief?]

this was an excellent programme, the makers and commissioners of it are to be heartily congratulated and can we have LOTS more .... please?