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Showing content with the highest reputation on 05/11/2012 in all areas

  1. This comes from a tendency back in the mid-20th Century where the academy attempted to be on the "forefront" of musical expression and many conservatories forced their students to write in avant garde styles. And, of course, when your teacher at Juilliard speaks, you, as a young and malleable student, will surely follow and be molded to how the teacher wants. This still goes on today but to a lesser extend. Because of the increased pluralism of styles in the late 20th and now 21st Centuries, it is clear that this forcing of one specific style (or set of styles) can't work. People will write what they want to write. Now, should students be forced out of their comfort zone and write in things which they are unfamiliar, absolutely. To take an example from my studies, my comp teacher assigned me to write a pop song with simple harmony and a secular text (since it's a Christian school there are more banal worship songs than can fit in a landfill). I did my best but it was quite a bad piece. I was simply not familiar with the genre or idiom. But I learned a great deal. Similarly, I was assigned to write a piece for electronics simply out of rhythmic elements, no pitches. Multiple meters where encouraged while loops where discouraged. This was also unusual for me since I didn't know what I was doing. I don't think rhythmically like that about my music. But it forced me to think about it in, honestly, a very clinical way. It was a good learning experience. That type of thing should be thoroughly encouraged in university. What shouldn't be encouraged is teachers forcing students to write what the students' do not want to write on a broader scale. I know stories about students being failed for not writing specifically in an avant garde style. Conversely I've seen this happen with pro-romantic teachers at Juilliard (ironically) who failed a student for not having enough melody in their songs. Let the student write what he wants to write while making him do unusual and uncomfortable things too.
    2 points
  2. Yes, I realize that. I'm trying to say it's wrong from any direction to attack someone's music that viciously, especially publicly. If you want, I'll throw an obnoxious conservative out there as an example: Hanslick. Look how often throughout history such condemnations have proven to be incorrect (or whatever) and fodder for amusement by anyone reading music history anyway. It's one thing to have personal opinions, but to try to destroy someone's career and get more people to follow "your" path...that's a psychosis of some sort. Are they so insecure in what they are peddling that they have to resort to that? I do wonder. I recently came across a video on youtube of Xenakis talking about some scandal he had because all the serialists were against him--he called them fascists. So yes, it happened even within the avant-garde. I don't disagree, but I'm talking about some final, thesis-like composition that I would imagine should be a personal expression, not an exercise in throwing in every technique you've learned just because. That's what coursework is for. Familiarity and learning a style are not the same as adopting it, but I otherwise agree one should learn as much as one can. Well, I guess it's possible that him trashing your music is maybe going to get you support by people who don't like him.... I was trying to use them as examples, not focal points per se. What I'm calling the politicization or propagandizing of certain styles is stupid and actually self-defeating. The greatest of the great composers learned as much as they could about as many styles as they could and fused them together with their own style; they didn't fetishize. Maybe there are a few that don't fit that description, but the ones that are coming to my mind now did so.
    1 point
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