Who Killed Classical Music?

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Muck is no more "common" than I, and I adore Schönberg's Music - 53 CDs in my collection and the scores of most of his works. I go to as many performances of his Music as I can, too - attending them in my droves, in fact.

[Richard Barrett]

Muck is no more "common" than I

Grew's use of terms like "common people" reflects more on him than on anyone else, or at least on his tiresome online persona.

With regard to the appreciation of modern music, I've said this before but: when I first came across modern music in the form of library LPs of Stockhausen when I was 13 or so, I found them immediately compelling (if not immediately comprehensible, that came somewhat later) and the rest is history so to speak, and this despite my coming from a family/social background that wasn't in the least musical, intellectual or privileged in any other way. These are facts, however anecdotal; if it can happen to me it can happen to anyone. And it does. There's simply no need for vague, thoughtless and fact-free generalisations like "staying away in droves"; again they reflect principally on the prejudices of the people who make them.

[Honoured Guest]

if it can happen to me it can happen to anyone. And it does. There's simply no need for vague, thoughtless and fact-free generalisations like "staying away in droves"; again they reflect principally on the prejudices of the people who make them.

I'm not sure that's true. I think it's more likely that different people have different predispositions, which I do agree may be independent of family/social background. I also agree that people need to come into contact with the music before they can have any response to it.

I know I'm generalising, but I think the early argument of the R4 programme was that there was a modernist Darmstadt postwar agenda to develop music in a certain direction. That automatically kills the interest in modern composition of everyone who isn't personally disposed to respond to that strain of music. Whereas, in a more open and pluralist field of composition, there may be a greater variety at any time of compositional approaches and influences, and it's likely that many more listeners will find some music of personal interest, and so more audiences will sustain a lively interest in contemporary composition and musicmaking.

[Richard Barrett]

I think it's more likely that different people have different predispositions

Obviously. What I meant was it can happen to anyone with appropriate "receptors".

As for the supposed "Darmstadt power agenda", that was a half-century ago. By the 1960s there was already a much more open and pluralistic field, in fact I would say it's never been more open before or since, even some of the most commercially-successful among creative musicians (the Beatles! as S_A has already mentioned) partook of it. What is it about Gabriel Prokofiev's approach that represents more "openness" than say "A Day in the Life"? Some people talk about freedom when they really mean their own particular flavour of restriction.

[ahinton]

I'm not sure that's true. I think it's more likely that different people have different predispositions, which I do agree may be independent of family/social background. I also agree that people need to come into contact with the music before they can have any response to it.

I know I'm generalising, but I think the early argument of the R4 programme was that there was a modernist Darmstadt postwar agenda to develop music in a certain direction. That automatically kills the interest in modern composition of everyone who isn't personally disposed to respond to that strain of music. Whereas, in a more open and pluralist field of composition, there may be a greater variety at any time of compositional approaches and influences, and it's likely that many more listeners will find some music of personal interest, and so more audiences will sustain a lively interest in contemporary composition and musicmaking.

Richard Barrett did say "if it can happen to me it can happen to anyone"; not "everyone", please note!

Anyway, as to the Darmstadt bit of the programme (to which I've only just listened, incidentally), anyone listening with no prior knowledge of post-WWII Western "classical" music history could be forgiven for assuming that there was Darmstadt seeking to sweep away the past and begin anew and there were people at the same time in Russia writing tonal works with melodies and reaching wider audiences and that was about it. Goehr briefly mentioned his own fly-on-the-wall take on 50s Darmstadt and cited Henze as another composer who stood aside from its apparent fundamental principles, but no one mentioned Carter or Xenakis as examples of other so-called "modernists" not under the spell of the place, or indeed that so much else was going on elsewhere.

This was, for me, the principal problem with the programme; it was almost all 12 note serialist Schönberg, the emeritus musical bogeyman-for-life-and-beyond in the post-WWI era and Boulez the total serialist ditto in the post-WWII one, with most other music peremptorily consigned to the periphery as though that's where it actually was. OK, you can hope to achieve little beyond surface scratching of a massive topic such as this one in a programme shorter than half an hour, but what was done in this one seemed just too specifically agenda-driven, constricted and disproportionate, despite some valuable contributions from Stephen Johnson and Sandy Goehr and an almost embarassingly minuscule cameo rôle for David Matthews.

Perhaps someone will make a spoof response programme called Who cares if you listen to who killed classical music...

OK, coat duly got!

[amateur51]

I think of him more as a Tony Conrad sort of guy.

For a moment I thought I'd read "Jess Conrad" there.

Better keep your nose out of that business.;D

[ardcarp]

I heard the programme yesterday on its Saturday repeat....yes, as has already been said, on R4.

If anyone has 'killed classical music' it's us. I suspect that 95% of children grow up without hearing art-music (let's call it that) at home, where the sound-world is either TV or local pop radio-station. If school does not (or more likely will not) introduce them to some art-music music, then only a tiny proportion will come to it it (whether it be Schubert or Schoenberg) as adults.
This is because 'proper' music was created by intellectual effort and it takes some intellectual effort to unscramble the process in our brains (even though we may not realise it) and make some aesthetic sense of it. I was rather unsettled by that Tansy person suggesting that it's only primeval thumping of drums and a naive fragment melody that is the future. She has had the luxury of deconstruction....like the BBC's dumbing down really.

Oh dear, I've lost me coat...............

[Quarky]

I heard the programme yesterday on its Saturday repeat....yes, as has already been said, on R4.

If anyone has 'killed classical music' it's us. I suspect that 95% of children grow up without hearing art-music (let's call it that) at home, where the sound-world is either TV or local pop radio-station. If school does not (or more likely will not) introduce them to some art-music music, then only a tiny proportion will come to it it (whether it be Schubert or Schoenberg) as adults.
This is because 'proper' music was created by intellectual effort and it takes some intellectual effort to unscramble the process in our brains (even though we may not realise it) and make some aesthetic sense of it. I was rather unsettled by that Tansy person suggesting that it's only primeval thumping of drums and a naive fragment melody that is the future. She has had the luxury of deconstruction....like the BBC's dumbing down really.

Oh dear, I've lost me coat...............

If you have lost your coat, adcarp, I've lost mine too, because that is exactly what I wanted to say, but probably in a less focussed way.

Listening to Lachenmann's Wegenlied/ Kinderspiel last night, BBC Performing Groups, that struck me as exactly the approach that a child or newcomer might play the piano. Unless they were extremely gifted, they might notice elementary harmonies in passing, but I don't think they would hit upon the key signature system. So are the sounds produced by an untrained person musically invalid?

So Sidney states "Verily this shows why tonality is both inescapable and indispensible". If the slate were wiped clean of musical history, would tonality be recreated in this day and age?

[teamsaint]

Much of what you say rings true, Ards. But if its "US" that have done the damage, isn't that in a sense blaming the victim?

Most parents, for instance, surely try to pass on the the best of what they know to their kids.
I would lay much more at the door of a media and information network that is seemingly happy to perpetrate many half truths and distortions,and that is being generous.
These might include that certain types of music
1 are too difficult for most people to enjoy or understand.
2. Take too much time.
3. Are too expensive
4.Have nothing to say to most people.
5. Are really just museum pieces.
and so on. (add your own).

What concerns me is who is setting agendas like these. I know what I think.

[MrGongGong]

Listening to Lachenmann's Wegenlied/ Kinderspiel last night, BBC Performing Groups, that struck me as exactly the approach that a child or newcomer might play the piano. Unless they were extremely gifted, they might notice elementary harmonies in passing, but I don't think they would hit upon the key signature system. So are the sounds produced by an untrained person musically invalid?

Oh dear, I think you might be going about this in a rather odd way?

Sid's "logic" is fundamentally flawed because he makes a definition to suit his argument.

A bit like this.

I like dancing, I like music to dance to, we all like dancing to music.
So it's obvious that the Matthew Passion is a rubbish piece of music because it hasn't got a beat to dance to and keeps changing tempo which makes me fall over on the dancefloor. The music of Steps on the other hand, always has a solid beat so I can dance all night.
Therefore:

Bach= Rubbish
Steps= Good

So Sidney states "Verily this shows why tonality is both inescapable and indispensible". If the slate were wiped clean of musical history, would tonality be recreated in this day and age?

No it doesn't show that at all, it all depends (i'm sorry about this, but there you go, it's context again!) WHAT you mean by "tonality". A cursory study of North Indian Classical Music will do for a start! (we can do Gagaku later)

[ardcarp]

Most parents, for instance, surely try to pass on the the best of what they know to their kids.

You're seeing this from an (understandably) middle-class standpoint, teamsaint. Educational ideals used to be about aspiration to 'higher things', or to put it bluntly giving the ignorant the opportunity of enlightenment. Do 'most' parents want to pass on the best of what they know? And is 'the best of what they know' going to be of less and less value as we spiral downwards as a nation of culture?

[french frank]

What concerns me is who is setting agendas like these. I know what I think.

I don't know, but it still seems odd to me that the Director of the Proms should have arranged a concert for a "BBC Three" type audience - The Urban Classic; included a short piece by Mosolov and another by Henze; and then sanctioned their removal from the recorded broadcast when it was televised on BBC Three. Even though (it seemed to me) a certain amount of care had gone into the selection of the two short pieces, they could not be allowed to reach the eyes and ears of the young audience. Someone certainly was working to an agenda.

[Quarky]

OK MrGG.

While (does anyone use whilst anymore?) I agree totally with adcarp's original post, it seems I'm drawing different conclusions.

[MrGongGong]

OK MrGG.

While (does anyone use whilst anymore?) I agree totally with adcarp's original post, it seems I'm drawing different conclusions.

Even the bit about 'proper' music ?

[Honoured Guest]

My natural inclination is to think that it's only fair to make the BBC Proms as inclusive as possible. My next thought (which may be wrong because I have no evidence) is that this Urban Prom was very probably an experiment, to some extent, because it was a first for the Proms in some ways, so its successors in future years may be tweaked in response to an assessment of last year's. I watched the tv broadcast and my first observation is that this was a BBC Orchestra Prom with most of the music specially arranged or composed, so it seemed to me to fit very much into the ongoing remit of the BBC Orchestras and to receive very welcome extra prominence by its inclusion in the Proms and by being broadcast at quite some length on television. Personally, it was an introduction to most of the solo artists and I very much enjoyed it.

I don't have a view on the two short contextual classical inclusions in the live concert because I didn't see them. Obviously they did reach the eyes and ears of the audience in the hall. I hope that they didn't spoil their enjoyment of the rest of the concert.