Who Killed Classical Music?

[MrGongGong]

I thought we had established that it wasn't dead ?

Where's the body ?

[ahinton]

I thought we had established that it wasn't dead ?

Where's the body ?

Yes, we had, but then I didn't actually suggest otherwise!...

[Sydney Grew]

Well well kiddies! Looks like my two simple questions have got you stumped. What I am reading reminds me of one of those cinematic films where the defeated Martian dissolves into a horrid blob of bubbling black goo.

[ahinton]

Well well kiddies! Looks like my two simple questions have got you stumped. What I am reading reminds me of one of those cinematic films where the defeated Martian dissolves into a horrid blob of bubbling black goo.

I doubt that I have any more idea than anyone else here as to which two questions you're referring to, but here are two from your #142:

"So - good serial music is not the result of the composer's consciously applied skills and labour, but instead arises from divine intervention - rather like van Beethoven wandering through the woods seeking inspiration?

It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing . . . ?"
To the first, I can only respond that I was not aware than anyone had sought to suggest that any composed music, good or bad, serial or non-serial, was/is other than "the result of the composer's consciously applied skills and labour".

To the second, I can only respond that your Shakesperean quotation, of dubious if indeed any relevance in the present context, cannot be and has not been truend into a question by the mere addition of a question mark at the end.

If, however, you are referring to two othe questions that you have supposedly posed, perhaps you might care to clarify wht they are.

[kea]

1) Why twelve notes?

Thirteen is unlucky. Eleven is a prime number and therefore cannot be evenly divided. Ten might have been used to-day, but in Schönberg's time, the metric system had not yet been invented.

2) As has already been observed, the common people stay away in droves from performances of modern music. Why is the member unable or unwilling to accept their judgement?

One would expect a scholar to remember that the word "judgment" has only one e. And that in fact the common people seem to have a great deal of enthusiasm for the music of Berg, Shtrafinski, Schostackowitsch and other such individuals whose music is modern to some degree or another. Even Schönberg has displayed a capacity to "sell" when performed by the elegant Fraulein Hahn or some other celebrated instrumentalist, and in that instance was more highly praised than the Sibelius concerto with which it was paired, though that concerto has always struck this particular member as a most gloomy and uninspiring composition!

I dare say the telegraph offices are rather chuffed at the number of words this message totals, so will cease transmitting before I go bankrupt. Jenkins, the motor-car, if you please.

[ahinton]

Thirteen is unlucky. Eleven is a prime number and therefore cannot be evenly divided. Ten might have been used to-day, but in Schönberg's time, the metric system had not yet been invented.


One would expect a scholar to remember that the word "judgment" has only one e. And that in fact the common people seem to have a great deal of enthusiasm for the music of Berg, Shtrafinski, Schostackowitsch and other such individuals whose music is modern to some degree or another. Even Schönberg has displayed a capacity to "sell" when performed by the elegant Fraulein Hahn or some other celebrated instrumentalist, and in that instance was more highly praised than the Sibelius concerto with which it was paired, though that concerto has always struck this particular member as a most gloomy and uninspiring composition!

I dare say the telegraph offices are rather chuffed at the number of words this message totals, so will cease transmitting before I go bankrupt. Jenkins, the motor-car, if you please.

Nice one! - apart, perhaps, from the fact that one would expect a scholar to remember that the metric system predates Schönberg by quite a few years!...

OK, so it was those two questions, the latter of which appears to have been directed at me personally in any case.

I'd already given a serious answer to the first of these by pointing out that not all music based around serial principles and procedures necessarily involves all twelve tones but should perhaps have added that plenty of non-serial music based on the even tempered chromatic system in which an octave is divided into twelve inevitably involves all twleve tones but seems not to invite the same question from SG, as he does not seem to question that; all the same, I much prefer your answers!

I had also already answered the second one by questioning who these "common people" are (and not having that question answered) and stating that Western "classical" music as a whole is such a minority interest that only a tiny proportion of the populace ever attends any "classical" performances or purchases "classical" CDs.

It would seem that SG fails to recoginse the presence of answers when it appears to suit him not to do so, but there's little that I can do about that.

[Sydney Grew]

If . . . you are referring to two othe[r] questions that you have supposedly posed, perhaps you might care to clarify wh[a]t they are.

The two unanswered questions to which I refer were posed in response 101:

http://www.for3.org/forums/showthread.php?10291-Who-Killed-Classical-Music/page11

Bend your mind to them anew if you thus incline!

But since this thread is really about Schönberg's hundred-year-old innovations, I would like to point out another way in which he seems to have been confused. His two principal harmony books are the Harmonielehre of 1911 and the Structural Functions of Harmony of 1954. (In the "Acknowledgement," written in 1948, which prefaces the latter, he wrote: "I had been constantly dissatisfied with the knowledge of harmony of my students of composition at [the] University of Southern Cali-fornia, Los Angeles. To remedy this shortcoming I instituted a new class to which the conventional harmony teaching should be the prerequisite." - My impression is that it did not help a lot.) Anyway, Schönberg's main interest (as has been that of most writers on harmony) appears to have been in voice leading, tonality, and the way chords progress or succeed one another. Thus he is always using the terms "altered, flattened, augmented," and so on. But in fact there is no such animal as an altered chord, and he was wrong to think in those terms. One chord is one chord, and another chord is an entirely different chord - no relation. The true study of harmony treats of the characteristics of chords in total isolation; oddly enough that is a book that has not yet been written.

[ahinton]

The two unanswered questions to which I refer were posed in response 101:

http://www.for3.org/forums/showthrea...l-Music/page11

Whilst I thank you for your clarification, member kea was one step ahead of you in providing the same and, as you will note, I have already addressed these questions again.

Bend your mind to them anew if you thus incline!

I hardly needed to do that but am pleased at your use of the word "anew" which can be taken to read that you recognise after all that I'd answered your two questions already but that you didn't particularly like what I'd written in so doing.

But since this thread is really about Schönberg's hundred-year-old innovations

Is it? I thought that it was about the dubious question as to who killed "classical music".

I would like to point out another way in which he seems to have been confused. His two principal harmony books are the Harmonielehre of 1911 and the Structural Functions of Harmony of 1954.

It was not written in 1954; even Schoenberg himself could not have managed that.

(In the "Acknowledgement," written in 1948, which prefaces the latter, he wrote: "I had been constantly dissatisfied with the knowledge of harmony of my students of composition at [the] University of Southern Cali-fornia, Los Angeles. To remedy this shortcoming I instituted a new class to which the conventional harmony teaching should be the prerequisite." - My impression is that it did not help a lot.) Anyway, Schönberg's main interest (as has been that of most writers on harmony) appears to have been in voice leading, tonality, and the way chords progress or succeed one another. Thus he is always using the terms "altered, flattened, augmented," and so on. But in fact there is no such animal as an altered chord, and he was wrong to think in those terms. One chord is one chord, and another chord is an entirely different chord - no relation. The true study of harmony treats of the characteristics of chords in total isolation; oddly enough that is a book that has not yet been written.

Why hyphenate California, especially as neither Schoenberg himself nor anyone else did/does? Schönberg / Schoenberg was always rooted in Western musical traditions and much of his teaching revolved around these. To suggest what you do in your last two sentence here would fail to ring a chord (sorry!) with most people, not just Schoenberg who would probably have had you ejected from his classes had you attended them and made assertions like those!

Schoenberg is credited (or is it debited?) as having made some remark about Cage having an inadequate grasp of harmony. Now along comes Sydney Grew and professes, by implication, that he believes that he has a finer understanding of it than did Schönberg / Schoenberg. Well, in that case, it really is time to read your treatises on harmony (or extracts therefrom if they're still works in progress) and, even more importantly, to see and hear some of your compositions, the latter of which might well be expected to have it in them to change the course of 21st century Western "classical" music history!

[Richard Barrett]

I would like to point out another way in which he seems to have been confused.

Somebody is certainly confused. Let's see - is it likely to be one of the most celebrated and influential composers of the twentieth century, or a pseudonymous internet forum contributor whose qualifications to pronounce on matters of music theory are obscure to say the least?

Be that as it may, I suppose the radio "show" ostensibly under discussion has ended up fulfilling its presumed function in so far as it has generated a certain amount of discussion. I think the question of whether contemporary composition is making contact with audiences is an important one for anyone involved or interested in that area, and I don't see that the populistic "solutions" proffered on the programme, which are nothing new of course, really address the issue at all, as opposed to furthering someone's personal agenda. The BBC of course used to take an active role in presenting modern music (and, back in the day, taking people like me on life-changing voyages of discovery) but now seems to be either indifferent or actively marginalising it. Who made this decision, I wonder?

[Sydney Grew]

Who made this decision, I wonder?

Wilfrid Mellers?

[ahinton]

Somebody is certainly confused. Let's see - is it likely to be one of the most celebrated and influential composers of the twentieth century, or a pseudonymous internet forum contributor whose qualifications to pronounce on matters of music theory are obscure to say the least?

Be that as it may, I suppose the radio "show" ostensibly under discussion has ended up fulfilling its presumed function in so far as it has generated a certain amount of discussion. I think the question of whether contemporary composition is making contact with audiences is an important one for anyone involved or interested in that area, and I don't see that the populistic "solutions" proffered on the programme, which are nothing new of course, really address the issue at all, as opposed to furthering someone's personal agenda. The BBC of course used to take an active role in presenting modern music (and, back in the day, taking people like me on life-changing voyages of discovery) but now seems to be either indifferent or actively marginalising it. Who made this decision, I wonder?

I agree with what you write here and might well ask the same question as you do in your first paragraph (as is perhaps implicit in my previous post), but I suspect that a lot of us would at the very least like to know whose decision it was to sideline the presentation not only of contemporary music but of intelligent discussion at BBC of the kind that we all recall from the past...

[ahinton]

Wilfrid Mellers?

What on earth prompts to you think that it might have been him, of all people?

[Honoured Guest]

From WM's Guardian obituary: "He dismissed academically fashionable systems of musical analysis for their "pre-ordained" insights, and once castigated the head of new music at the BBC, Hans Keller, for his narrowness." http://www.theguardian.com/music/200...musicandopera1

[Richard Barrett]

I don't think changing the policy of BBC radio programming could be counted among Mellers' diverse achievements. As for Hans Keller, if he was such an intolerantly modernist mandarin why is it that compositions were dedicated to him by Britten, David Matthews and Robert Simpson, among other non-avant-gardists?

[Honoured Guest]

Sycophancy to the powers that be?