What is Modern Music?

[teamsaint]

I would think that a problem with defining something like " Modern Music" is that in order to have any practical application, you need to be able to fit specific music inside that definition.
And the further problem with a relatively narrow ( although i'm not sure it is that narrow really) definition like the one provided by Beefy is that one would have to constantly re evaluate what fits the definition, and this is subject to individual interpretation anyway. Which is not to say it might not be a useful working tool.
I was thinking about The Imagined Village, which is a folk music album , of mostly traditional music, re worked with a number of contemporary features. A lot of(folk music loving) people would say it is Modern Music,in the context of its idiom, and it certainly represents a significant shift in style in British folk music, of the kind suggested by Beefy's definition.
But whether it fits the definition for , say, the HCNF audience is a whole different thing.
And if the next Imagined Village album reworks music in even more radical ways, then the existing work might then become something that was modern, but no longer fits that definition.

[ardcarp]

In my book, modernism very firmly refers to the replacement of naturally artistic expression, which involves an element of emotion, with cerebral concept(s). For example, modernism is the movement in the visual arts that started in 1906 when Picasso and Braques sought to represent subjects using concepts — the features on the other side needn't be ignored simply because they are out of sight. The simplest example is the Magritte painting of a pipe, which contains the caption "Ceci n'est pas une pipe", ie it's not a pipe but a picture of a pipe, and, by the way, Magritte entitled the picture "Chanson". Or composers like Webern and Schoenberg took the idea that the accepted Pythagorean scale was an arbitrary construct and so replaced it with a conceptualised mode that left people thinking, hey, they've replaced the music that could conjure with my emotions with a cold, bloodless intellectual idea. Similar abasements were attempted by Joyce and Eliot in the printed word. Fast forward and you find a pile of bricks in the Tate with an unmade bed in the next room. Both could be argued to engage us intellectually but neither is capable of touching or calling on our emotions. Except possbly derision.

I'm glad you mention analogies with the world of art, which seems to have a better grasp on the word 'modernism'. Throughout the 20thC there were always attempts to equate movements in fine art with musical styles, impressionism being an obvious (but maybe dodgy) example. If one must pursue the analogy, then fine-art seemed to get radical years ahead of music!

Referring to musical modernism as meaning 'getting rid of emotion' is a bit tricky isn't it? I can see that the serialists and indeed the neo-classicists may have had this in mind. But again we are dancing on the head of a pin over meanings of words, because I certainly have an emotional response to, say, Stravinsky's Symphony in C or Prokofiev's Classical Symphony. 'Emotional' doesn't have to mean weeping uncontrollably or beating the breast. And I'm afraid the proposed replacement for emotion, 'cerebral concepts', is just a linguistic fudge. A dog can have a 'cerebral concept' by knowing that his breakfast will always be served in a bowl near the kitchen door. I guess the writer of that phrase had something more elevated in mind. Maybe we need Jean's help again here.

[Beef Oven!]

......... Maybe we need Jean's help again here.

I think Jean has done that already with post #45.

[jean]

I've always been very interested in parallels between music and the visual arts, and have started several replies to this thread that I haven't posted.

It does seem to me though that in introducing modernnism into the discussion we're taking it off in another direction; if we want to deal with the points raised by Aubade, we need a definition of music itself, unqualified by any adjective, to begin with.

[MrGongGong]

In my book, modernism very firmly refers to the replacement of naturally artistic expression, which involves an element of emotion, with cerebral concept(s).

It's that word again

Fast forward and you find a pile of bricks in the Tate with an unmade bed in the next room. Both could be argued to engage us intellectually but neither is capable of touching or calling on our emotions. Except possbly derision.

Speak for yourself matey, I find Carl Andre's sculpture very emotionally resonant.

Without saying anythinng about the value-judgments in your post, can I just point out that the adjective modern covers a wider semantic area than the noun modernism.

Indeed, Nigel Tufnel points out, there's a big difference between "sexy" and "Sexist"

I love this

Or composers like Webern and Schoenberg took the idea that the accepted Pythagorean scale was an arbitrary construct and so replaced it with a conceptualised mode that left people thinking, hey, they've replaced the music that could conjure with my emotions with a cold, bloodless intellectual idea.

Nothing like extrapolating ones own response to something into something universal!

[ardcarp]

think Jean has done that already with post #45.

Er, I did use the word 'again'.

[Beef Oven!]

It does seem to me though that in introducing modernnism into the discussion we're taking it off in another direction; if we want to deal with the points raised by Aubade, we need a definition of music itself, unqualified by any adjective, to begin with.

I was rather hoping that a definition of modern music could be pursued in the first place without a definition of music itself because I have never been able to get my head 'round such a definition, no matter how much I've thought about it.

All sound is music to me; the traffic, birds, insects etc. Cage's 4'33 contains much music, IMV. But I couldn't explain why I think all this is music.

[ahinton]

Referring to musical modernism as meaning 'getting rid of emotion' is a bit tricky isn't it? I can see that the serialists and indeed the neo-classicists may have had this in mind. But again we are dancing on the head of a pin over meanings of words, because I certainly have an emotional response to, say, Stravinsky's Symphony in C or Prokofiev's Classical Symphony. 'Emotional' doesn't have to mean weeping uncontrollably or beating the breast. And I'm afraid the proposed replacement for emotion, 'cerebral concepts', is just a linguistic fudge. A dog can have a 'cerebral concept' by knowing that his breakfast will always be served in a bowl near the kitchen door. I guess the writer of that phrase had something more elevated in mind.

As I've mentioned before; nothing but confusion can arise from attempting to equate "musical modernism" (whatever that may be at any time) with "modern music" in terms of answering the question posed by the thread topic. In the first paragraph of an essay on Elliott Carter (written towards the end of the composer's life), Daniel Barenboim wrote that, notwithstanding the widespread love for and admiration for certain works of Mendelssohn, the course of 19th century Western musical history would have been no different without him and one might interpret this as Barenboim's assertion that Mendelssohn was not a "modernist" in his day whereas, for example, Berlioz, Chopin, Liszt, Wagner (and perhaps to a slightly lesser extent Alkan) were; what constituted "modern music" in the mid-19th century would, however, have been a different matter

As the musical modernism being illustrated by a desire to rid music of "emotion", this is surely a nonsense; which composers from, say, the death of Liszt to that of Fauré sought to do that? I, too, have an emotional response to Stravinsky's Symphony in C even though it's probably not printable in polite society. "Emotional" indeed means many things and it's a constant source of irritation to me that the word "emotion" and its derivatives are so frequently debased by over-use and inappropriate use. Just as talent can be regarded as the worst enemy of genius, sentimentality can be seen as the worst enemy of emotion, in each case because the former gets widely mistaken for the latter.

The notion that music is either "emotional" or "cerebral" is likewise a nonsense (like that which seeks to persuade that men are practical and women emotional) because all musical creation is cerebral to the extent that various brain processes, including problem solving, are an inherent constituent of musical composition, but factionalising and snobbery so often risk getting in the way of understanding of such issues.

Someone once said to me of something of mine that she found it to be powerfully emotional - and then, goddamit, apologised for saying so because she thought that this isn't what a composer might want to hear! (I suppose because, to some people, composers are such brainboxes that they have little room for emotional expression); I replied that if she and others thought otherwise then I'd probably got it all wrong and the best thing to do would be to introduce the score to the shredder sharpish. So yes - "cerebral concepts" - at least in the sense that they can get dragged into such considerations - is indeed no more than the linguistic fudge as which you describe it.

The kind of sentimentality of which Rachmaninoff is sometimes accused by his detractors (and which is in the accusers' heads rather than Rachaminoff's) all too often rests on the "big tune" content of some of his works; if we recognise that Rachmaninoff's music is replete with genuine emotion rather than cheap Hollywood-type sentimentality (which would be reasonable solely on the grounds that most of it was in any case written before Hollywood became Hollywood), would anyone seriously find his later works - i.e. those few pieces that he wrote after leaving his native Russia for good - any less emotional than his earlier ones simply because the "big tunes" of the second symphony and second piano concerto are no olonger present as once they were? (I'm referring here principally to his fourth piano concerto, third symphony and Symphonic Dances).

Are Varèse's Amériques, Arcana and Ecuatorial short on emotion? Did Scriabin, Roslavets and Schönberg eschew emotion in favour of some kind of "cerebral" expression arising from their respective semi-serial and serial organisation of tones? Of course not! Does the fact that I cannot get anywhere near Boulez's piano sonatas as I can some of his other works mark them out as lacking in emotional content? I don't see what this would be the case just because they don't register with me.

I think that we can therefore dispense with any notion that "modern music", whatever it may be, may be identified or is identifiable by a reduction of emotional expression as a creative priority; like any other music, "modern music" is, after all, composed by humans!

[MrGongGong]

The notion that music is either "emotional" or "cerebral" is likewise a nonsense (like that which seeks to persuade that men are practical and women emotional) because all musical creation is cerebral to the extent that various brain processes, including problem solving, are an inherent constituent of musical composition, but factionalising and snobbery so often risk getting in the way of understanding of such issues.

Well put IMV
It's a very widespread "nonsense" though i'm afraid.

[ardcarp]

All sound is music to me; the traffic, birds, insects etc

On Breakfast, Clemmy read out an email complaining that something earlier in the programme (surely not Transports de Joie ?) sounded like a cat walking across a keyboard. A cat walking across a keyboard would seem to me a perfectly legitimate way to generate music.

[ahinton]

On Breakfast, Clemmy read out an email complaining that something earlier in the programme (surely not Transports de Joie ?) sounded like a cat walking across a keyboard. A cat walking across a keyboard would seem to me a perfectly legitimate way to generate music.

Provided only that either the cat was heavy enough and/or the key action light enough to enable it to depress keys thereby. That said, as any sound generated by a cat walking across a keyboard would surely be from high pitches to low ones or vice versa, how come whichever piece it was supposedly reminded the writer of that email of any work broadcast earlier in that programme and which work was it? We should be told...

My question would be why on earth did CB-H choose that particular one to read out? It was presumably not the only one that had been received at the time (and, even if it had, she was surely under no moral or contractual obligation to read it out?). Who decides which ones get read and on what grounds? Again, we should be told...

[ahinton]

Well put IMV

Thank you.

It's a very widespread "nonsense" though i'm afraid.

You're telling me it is! - though why it is so widespread I have little or no idea beyond the wearisom and depressing fact of equally widespread susceptibility to received "opinion"...

[Nick Armstrong]

A cat walking across a keyboard would seem to me a perfectly legitimate way to generate music.

Claude Depussy did it every day of his working life...

I've already got my coat.

[ahinton]

[COLOR="#0000FF"]Claude Depussy did it every day of his working life...

Don't you mean Clawed Depussy?

Zez Confrey also did it but less frequently - speaking of whom, although Sorabji was a great cat lover, not a lot of people know that Opus clavicembalisticum means Kitten on the keys...

I'll get all the coats that I have...

[teamsaint]

Don't you mean Clawed Depussy?

Zez Confrey also did it but less frequently - speaking of whom, although Sorabji was a great cat lover, not a lot of people know that Opus clavicembalisticum means Kitten on the keys...

I'll get all the coats that I have...

of course yer more modern musical cat tends to prefer to go walkabout on a Mogg Synthesizer keyboard.

I'll take the lead and get my coat....
Edit...actually, it all makes you wonder, well makes me wonder, if there weren't hidden cat messages from Shostakovich in the DSCH motif...not very far, via a translation from the Russian, to DSH......