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[calimac]

Eight sentences about classical music I'd be happy never to read again from Matthew Guerrieri (via patioboe)

Gems. I will admit to having committed anniversary honors on dead composers (I did it just this week), but only as an excuse to call public attention to composers I was listening to yesterday and will be listening to again tomorrow. Otherwise, though, I've heard and loathe 'em all. Yes, I really have been told that I don't like what I like, and all the rest.

Comments

[barondave.livejournal.com]

I find that most criticism of art is aimed mainly at other art critics. This is a good example.

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

Well, I am an arts critic.

The relevance of this post to general readers is that these sentences often appear in writing directed towards them. Be warned that they're empty cant. That's all.

[barondave.livejournal.com]

I'd never heard several of them. And I have no problem calling Mozart or Beethoven "popular". They were never on the radio because radio didn't exist, and they needed sponsors because producing music was expensive. The fact remains that a lot of people liked their work, and their works were performed widely outside their own venue, and they were in demand as artists. Please don't let today's marketing hype be the standard for music popularity. Please.

And I have no problem with marking a composer's Odometer Year. Yes it's artificial, but it reminds listeners about good music. People like birthdays. What the heck. A composer's 500th Anniversary is not an important milestone for the composer (who isn't around to blow out the candles), but it's an excuse for a party.

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

Since you haven't heard some of the statements - I guess you don't read what I read - you may have missed the point. It's the people who criticize modern music by saying "Mozart and Beethoven were the popular music of their time" who are using today's marketing hype as the standard for music popularity. That's the attitude Guerrieri is mocking.

Similarly, I doubt Guerrieri has anything against making a whoop on your favorite composer's birthday. What he's opposed to are the giant floods of All Mozart, All the Time.

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

Enjoyed that very much. Esp. the uptown/Ovaltine one. Snort!

[rwl.livejournal.com]

Actually, I don't very much like atonal music.

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

I don't like most of it either (there are some exceptions), but this isn't about atonal music per se. It's about liking what you like, whatever it may be. I have indeed been accused of not really liking what I actually like, and even more often of really liking what I actually dislike.

Just to be a PitA...

[sturgeonslawyer.livejournal.com]

I'll argue here, rather than there, that these statements have some real truth-value, because I know you and not Soho-the-dog.

Nobody actually enjoys listening to atonal music—they just want other people to think they’re a pretentious intellectual.

Yes, some people enjoy listening to atonal music. I enjoy some atonal rock music. (Yes, Virginia, it exists.) But some people "enjoy" avant garde music because they get an intellectual buzz out of liking stuff the "masses" don't "get." I've encountered some of these; more importantly, I've encountered people who thought I was pretentious because of some of the music I enjoy. (How pretentious can I be, when I also enjoy Abba and the Monkees...?)

Jazz is America’s classical music.

S-t-D's argument with this involves misunderstanding it. A better version: Jazz is the USA's art music. As such, it occupies a place in USAn culture somewhat analogous to that occupied by orchestral music in European culture. (Serious art rock is a weird case: though rock is native to the USA, the origins in rock as serious music are more European.)

Mozart and Beethoven were the popular music of their time.

First, rather than M&B (or John Gay) I'd pick Liszt, who had some serious rockstarosity.

Second, no, they weren't. They may have had some popularity, but they were more like the Ornette Coleman and John Coltrane of their day -- writing serious, complex music that most people just won't spend the time and effort required to enjoy it. There's a good analogy between the famous "too many notes" comment, and Chuck Berry's complaint (familiar to you through the Beatles' cover): "I got no kick against modern jazz / unless they try to play it too darn fast / and change the beauty of the melody / it ends up sounding like a symphony." ... my goodness, there's that bit about jazz as classical music, too... I think you get the point.

The atmosphere at classical concerts is intimidating.

Imagine this: You go to the SFS, and some of Malcolm Arnold's "Dances" are on the programme for the night. When the orchestra starts, people in the audience get up and start dancing.

No? Why not? Isn't that what dance music is for?

To someone used to the atmosphere of a rock concert, yes, dammit, the atmopshere at classical concerts is intimidating. I blame Wagner, of course, and his insistence that the audience sit politely and applaud at the Correct Times. At popular music shows, folks respond physically to the music, and applaud when what the band is doing makes them happy. The symphonic atmosphere is intimidating in the same way as sitting down at a table where there are far more forks, knives, and spoons (and other implements whose names you don' tknow) situated carefully around each placecard, plus three or four cups and glasses and a little bowl. You don't want to make an ass of yourself, so you carefully watch the other diners, and realize quickly that some of them are doing the same. Yeah. Intimidating.

Orchestras need to do away with tuxedos because they’re stuffy and outdated.

First, the complaint is silly. Second, so is wearing tuxedoes. Why not just put on marching-band uniforms while they're at it? It is an artifact of times long gone.

Blah blah blah uptown composers blah blah blah downtown composers.

I have no idea what this is about, nor interest.

In celebration of the [large number]th anniversary of the birth of [dead composer].

I'm pretty sure you'll be with me on this: as you observed about the year 2000, the ticking-over of an odometer is a great excuse for a party. How do you party for a dead composer? You play his music.

Composers today only write music for other composers.

Soho-the-dog's response, Only if they’re buying, betrays some semantic confusion about the word "for." Composers compose music:
for their patrons.
for themselves.
for the audiences.
for the orchestras, soloists, etc., who will perform the music.
for critics.
etc.
The word "for" means something different in each of these cases. And I'll bet bucks to bagels that some composers write music with the specific intention of impressing or annoying their peers.

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

1) I bet it's more accurate to say that they enjoy parading those of their likes that annoy the stuffy. Epater le bourgeois or however the saying goes. But first, they actually like it.

2) Jazz is not America's only art music. What are all those composers Guerrieri named, chopped liver?

4) That's what makes it art music. Do people dance to modern jazz?

6) That's the point: why should you know what this is about?

7) As I observed elsewhere, the complaint is not about celebrating the odometer, it's about using it as an excuse to flood the world four times a century [x00 and x50 anniversaries of birth and of death] with something we get enough of the rest of the time anyway. That is, Mozart.

[sturgeonslawyer.livejournal.com]

re: 2) -- yes, there are quite a few USAn classical composers. And there are quite a few non-USAn jazz musicians. But as a form, classical music is native to Europe, and jazz is native to the USA.

Re: 4) I don't know whether people dance to modern jazz; I've never been to a modern jazz concert. I do know that people dance, etc., at art rock concerts. During the 2001 King Crimson tour, Adrien Belew liked to inform the folks up and dancing at the front of the hall, "You've all just been boogying in 13/8," or whatever the time signature of the song he picked to make the comment after that night might be. (If it only had one, of course...)

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

2) Fine, jazz originated in the US. And it is, or can be, art music, as classical is. But that doesn't make it "America's classical music" or "America's art music." That's a calculated insult both to US classical music and non-US jazz.

4) Art rock, at least the stuff I know, isn't art music in the sense I mean. (Which doesn't mean it isn't complex or sophisticated, or that it can't be listened to as art music.) The idea of sitting quietly and listening at a concert shouldn't be that strange. Some arts call for immediate audience response; some don't. Some plays call for cheering the hero and booing the villain (and clapping if you believe in fairies), some don't. I've never heard a peep from the audience during Hamlet. Some movies call for talking back and throwing spitballs at the screen, some don't.

7) Guerrieri isn't talking about that, he's talking about the Mozart hype. Anyway, some probably think we do get too much Shostakovich. Did I tell you about the poll in the UK to determine the most under-rated and the most over-rated author? Mervyn Peake came high in both categories.

[sturgeonslawyer.livejournal.com]

OK, I'll drop here, because we're at cross-purposes. My point isn't that the original sentences are "true," but that they misrepresent something that is. You're still kind of arguing with the original sentences.

Oh, and ... as near as I can tell by "art music" you must simply mean "music you don't have an immediate response to." OK, if that's how you want to define it, go ahead. To me it's "music that calls for a complex or sophisticated aesthetic response." That doesn't preclude it being danceable.

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

What on earth makes you think that I don't have "an immediate response" to classical music? Beethoven's Fifth utterly dazzled me the very first time. By the time I got to the end of the first movement I was hooked on this kind of music for life. That's a pretty strong immediate response.

Or do you think it's not "an immediate response" if you don't get up and dance?

Yrs,
Tree "I am not very, hm, bendable" Beard

[sturgeonslawyer.livejournal.com]

Bad writing. I meant "an immediate physical response."

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

I don't have an immediate physical response even to the most far removed from art music of music I like. (Except to tap my fingers, which I do to any music I like, though I try not to do it when other people are around, because I know it's annoying.)

This is why I signed my previous comment "Treebeard".

The one kind of music that really makes me want to get up and dance is English country-dance music, but that's a learned response, because I know the dance steps. (My finger-tapping is also extremely precise, and I always do it to a given piece of music exactly the same way.) I have never understood free-form dancing, and find the impulse to "get down and boogie" totally alien, even if I like the music that's being played (which I usually don't).

[sturgeonslawyer.livejournal.com]

Go back to the original comment; I didn't suggest that you would get up and dance in response to Arnold's "Dances"; I know you that well, anyway. But the reason I picked Arnold's "Dances" was because the do make me want to get up and dance. They're, well, dance music, quite aside from any question of whether or not they're "art" music (which of course they are). And I, at least, would feel a bit stifled by being unable in the context of a concert hall to at least sway and bob a bit in response to them.

And you never answered the question. What would be wrong with audiences responding to dance music by dancing? Why is the atmosphere at symphonic concerts such as to stifle, even forbid, this response?

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

Because I'm not unique. There's your answer.

I also answered the question in another way. Would you boo King Claudius as audiences boo Captain Hook?

I'm assuming the answer is no. As I already said, classical music isn't the only performing art that discourages the kind of audience response you seem to believe natural. (Which it isn't, not necessarily: my other point.)

Why does it do so? Because it gets in the way of experiencing the art itself. It's distracting. Why don't people run around yelling in art galleries? It wouldn't prevent you from seeing the art. It's because it's distracting. So is finger-tapping, which is why I try not to do it at concerts. Third answer.

[sturgeonslawyer.livejournal.com]

Would you boo King Claudius as audiences boo Captain Hook?

Context. At the Globe (original or reconstructed), I certainly would. Well, maybe not "as audiences boo Hook," because Claudius isn't a 2-dimensional villain the way Hook is. But certainly Shakespeare wrote with an active and responsive audience in mind.

The whole idea that art demands the audient's full and rapt attention is a modernist fallacy, birthed in the egoes of artists like Wagner and Hayden (his "Surprise" symphony was designed to deprive audients of a postprandial nap to which they certainly felt entitled).

[sturgeonslawyer.livejournal.com]

Oops. Hit "post" too soon.

re: 7. Okay, maybe for Mozart and Beethoven, but can you really complain that we get too much (or even enough) Shostakovich?