"Modernism", "Elitism", and "The Working Classes"

[Bryn]

I wonder if anyone would consider Philip Glass's Akhnaten as modernist. I certainly don't, yet his use of no less than three ancient languages, in addition to the audience's vernacular, must surely render it even more 'obscurantist' than Stravinsky's Oedipus Rex.

[Mal]

I wonder if anyone would consider Philip Glass's Akhnaten as modernist. I certainly don't, yet his use of no less than three ancient languages, in addition to the audience's vernacular, must surely render it even more 'obscurantist' than Stravinsky's Oedipus Rex.

This guy does:

"Philip Glass' Modernist Take On Ancient Egypt"

http://laist.com/2016/11/10/philip_glass_akhnaten_la_opera.php

Why would you not label it as modernist?

[Richard Barrett]

I wonder if anyone would consider Philip Glass's Akhnaten as modernist. I certainly don't, yet his use of no less than three ancient languages, in addition to the audience's vernacular, must surely render it even more 'obscurantist' than Stravinsky's Oedipus Rex.

I don't feel that "modernism" is a useful term anyway. Originally it seems to have meant something like those aspects of twentieth-century culture which represented some kind of break with what were seen as eternal verities such as tonality, figurative art, linear narratives and so on, even though none of them had been around for so very long in their nineteenth century forms. But of course history has a habit of continuing, and nowadays the idea that music and the other arts should be constantly renewed responses to their time and place and circumstances has lost out somewhat in favour of the "capitalist realism" mentioned upthread by S_A, which is exactly analogous to the (pseudo-)"socialist realism" promoted by Stalinist regimes in that it's an expression of fundamental(ist) ideological axioms which are always to be reinforced and never questioned. And "modernism" is nowadays more often bandied about as a label with which to situate any such questioning as outmoded and irrelevant.

[Bryn]

This guy does:

"Philip Glass' Modernist Take On Ancient Egypt"

http://laist.com/2016/11/10/philip_glass_akhnaten_la_opera.php

Why would you not label it as modernist?

I think Richard has got in and covered that one. I would just add that Glass's music is more usually regarded as a reaction against 'modernism'.

[Mal]

... your use of the word "Modernism", rather than coinciding with how that word is usually understood, is simply a shorthand for "Music/Art I don't like". The quotations you cite don't refer to Modernism, ...

The paper I cite implies that Stravinsky's Oedipus Rex is a modernist work, for instance, there's a direct comparison with the Waste Land: "It follows that Oedipus Rex, like The Waste Land, offers us pre-decayed materials, flitters and rubble ...."

Here's a Guardian article which states it explicitly, "One of the key modernist works, Oedipus Rex has rarely been absent from the repertory.":

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2002/aug/16/classicalmusicandopera.artsfeatures

I don't label every work I don't like "modernist". For instance, I don't like Andrew Lloyd-Webber's works, and I certainly don't call them modernist.

[BBMmk2]

Modernist with Stravinsky?

[teamsaint]

The paper I cite implies that Stravinsky's Oedipus Rex is a modernist work, for instance, there's a direct comparison with the Waste Land: "It follows that Oedipus Rex, like The Waste Land, offers us pre-decayed materials, flitters and rubble ...."

Here's a Guardian article which states it explicitly, "One of the key modernist works, Oedipus Rex has rarely been absent from the repertory.":

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2002/aug/16/classicalmusicandopera.artsfeatures

I don't label every work I don't like "modernist". For instance, I don't like Andrew Lloyd-Webber's works, and I certainly don't call them modernist.

You dont want to believe everthing that Tim Ashley writes.

[Bryn]

Modernist with Stravinsky?

Indeed, and Schoenberg's "little Modernsky" satire should not be taken as a serious attribution of modernism to old Igor, either.

[Mal]

I like the Rite of Spring and it's modernist, according to Sarah Bakewell:

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/jan/03/stravinsky-modernism-rite-spring-alarming

[Bryn]

I like the Rite of Spring and it's modernist, according to Sarah Bakewell:

https://www.theguardian.com/commenti...pring-alarming

The music is often cited, quite wrongly, as the source of the riot. It was the choreography rather than the music which caused the greater part of the ruckus. When performed as a concert work in London, a fairly short while after the ballet's premiere, it was well received. I have always heard it as greatly influenced by Stravinsky's hero, Tchaikovsky.

[Beef Oven!]

I have always heard it as greatly influenced by Stravinsky's hero, Tchaikovsky.

Intriguing, Bryn. Can you say more?

[Bryn]

Intriguing, Bryn. Can you say more?

I cannot cite chapter and verse, it's an aural impression I got as a teen, listening in particular to the Pathetique and The Rite, and which has never left me. At the time I was quite unaware of Stravinsky's zeal for Tchaikovsky's muse.

[greenilex]

May I humbly suggest that there is only one working class, to which we belong until we stop working and evaporate into thin air.

To be proud of not working is obnoxious.

[cloughie]

May I humbly suggest that there is only one working class, to which we belong until we stop working and evaporate into thin air.

To be proud of not working is obnoxious.

You may humbly suggest what you wish and make as many sweeping statements as you wish. I’m retired - so, in your book obnoxious, greenilex! Hopefully I’m not in thin air just yet!

[greenilex]

So am I - retired I mean - but I find myself working harder than ever, and only evaporating ever so slightly round the edges as yet.