Stirling_Radliff

@U238: I at least agree with you in this: that most claims made about anything can be reduced to series of assumptions, the foundations of which may not be understood or knowable by us; and therefore most knowledge as we have it may not be objectively substantial, by any standard or method we devise. What we're left with, then, is likelihood or other products of memory - which may be more substantial to us, insofar that it's at least more practical to us, than truth. So some mode of skepticism or nihilism may be appropriate; and meaning may only be a subjective ascription. I'm not sure that I agree with you, however, that 'Everything [!] is inherently meaningless'. If we believe meaning to be a subjective phenomenon, which doesn't exist without the subject; and if we believe meaning to be something that only occurs when a subject is congruous or otherwise aware of something other than himself (which may be objects); and if we believe that the conception of meaning is at least an occurrence in something, which may be the human mind, and which mayn't be anything or everything else, and which is at least existent insofar that that is the case - then we may infer at least that meaning exists, and that it exists where there is congruousness between the perceiving subject and the objects of his perception (which may even be the subject himself). We may believe further that meaning may exist in proportion to the number of subjects who perceive meaning; and that, therefore, meaning compasses everything applicable within human perception (including but not exclusive to the subject himself), insofar that meaning is therein ascribed. We may even believe this: that if there aren't subjects as such, but only intersubjects; if difference is false, and everything is unified, including humans and their perception of meaning; and, in this way, if humans are therefore innately congruous with what is unified, while being a part of a unity, and are even thereby variably aware of what is unified - then, if a person believed that everything as such had meaning, everything may well have meaning. But this is a line of reasoning, like any other line of reasoning, that is founded on something that may not be knowable, and it may even be formed as a falsehood by the void of our knowledge. One of the difficulties of nihilism, is that it's somewhat self-defeating: if everything is subjective, and difference and whatever else is only discernible by the subject, then the claim 'everything is subjective' only may or may not be true. There are no claims that may be known in a strict way; nor is there any possible way to verify claims to show whether they are or aren't true - including claims about itself. This may, however, be the most honest thing to say about anything, which may be taken from nihilism: that what is true may not be discernible through human experience (that being the sum of its perception and its critical faculties, and so on). I don't, however, know what to make or take from this kind of problem. It seems to me that there is a deficit of knowledge with which to properly decide it, and so it may not be soluble from any angle; logic itself is only a relevant means of knowledge insofar that it makes inferences from the world that are decidedly true. I'm too much a skeptic at the moment to say what claims are true or are not true. Meaning may be an innate part of existence, or it may not be an innate part of existence; to what degree it may be part or may not be part, I don't know, nor do I believe that we could begin to say. The problem with skepticism, or the belief that everything is doubtable, is that it produces nothing: it makes no claims, besides itself, but only reduces claims. Knowledge thereafter is only inferred by our knowledge-producing edifices; knowledge in this way may be thought to be prejudiced, and maybe positively, toward what produced it. And so I'm in a muddle. In an important way, the only things that may be spoken of are the things that we perceive; and we may only claim things about what we perceive insofar that we're able to. What is at least useful to us, we may believe, is to discover utility: what may not be true may at least be good for or useful to us. This reminds me of Nietzsche: 'Happiness and virtue are no arguments. But people like to forget... that making unhappy and evil are no counterarguments. Something might be true while being harmful and dangerous in the highest degree [!]. Indeed, it might be a characteristic of existence that those who would know it completely would perish, in which case the strength of a spirit should be measured according to how much of the "truth" one could still barely endure - or, to put it more clearly, to what degree one would require it to be thinned down, shrouded, sweetened, blunted, falsified' (Beyond Good and Evil, s 39, pg 239, BW). But I'm reminded elsewise that everything known is at least the product of our prejudices, more than that everything is subjective. This makes the most sense to me.

I've been reading Wilde's De Profundis lately, and found some passages worth sharing and which here might be relevant: 'Modern life is complex and relative. Those are its two distinguishing notes. To render the first we require atmosphere with its subtleties and nuances, of suggestion, of strange perspectives: as for the second we require background. That is why Sculpture has ceased to be a representative art; and why Music is a representative art; and why Literature is, and has been, and always will remain the supreme representative art' (pg 50). '[in] the prose-poem of the man who from the bronze of the image of the 'Pleasure that liveth for a Moment' has to make the image of the 'Sorrow that abideth for Ever' it is incarnate. It could not have been otherwise. At every single moment of one's life one is what one is going to be no less than what one has been. Art is a symbol, because man is a symbol. / It is... the ultimate realization of the artistic life. For the artistic life is simple self-development. Humility in the artist is his frank acceptance of all experiences, just as Love in the artist is simply that sense of Beauty that reveals to the world its body and soul' (pg 71). No matter Wilde's predispositions, and what accounts he gives here that may be more autobiographical than exactly true, I think these two passages are worth considering. With this in mind, I'll give one more quote, by Nietzsche: 'Gradually it has become clear to me what every great philosophy so far has been [and we may think of music likewise]: namely, the personal confession of its author and a kind of involuntary and unconscious memoir.... do not believe that a "drive to knowledge" is the father of philosophy [or maybe a drive to beauty for music]; but rather that another drive has, here as elsewhere, employed understanding (and misunderstanding) as a mere instrument. But anyone who considers the basic drives of man to see to what extent they may have been at play just here as inspiring spirits (or demons or kobolds) will find that all of them [all of the philosopher's drives] have done philosophy at some time [!] - and that every single one of them would like only too well to represent just itself as the ultimate purpose of existence and the legitimate master of all the other drives. For every drive wants to be master - and it attempts to philosophize in that spirit.... In the philosopher... there is nothing whatever that is impersonal; and above all, his morality bears decided and decisive witness to who he is - that is, in what order of rank the innermost drives of his nature stand in relation to each other' (Beyond Good and Evil, pgs 203-204, Part 1, s 6, BW). (Walter Kaufmann's note about this section: 'Nietzsche is thinking about the "great" philosophers. Now that there are literally thousands of "philosophers", these tend to be more akin to their colleagues in other departments than to the men discussed here'.) It seems to me, in any case, that music, along with every mode of expression, is dependent, firstly, on its expresser, who may be an artist; and, secondly, on the means of the expresser's inherited knowledge: his education, being didactic or autodidactic, by which he attained his particular quality of expression. Both of these, and maybe others, rendered in synthesis, account the prejudices of the expresser, which are the limitations that lately describe his individualization and his force as an expressing thing. What makes the expresser express himself, it seems to me, can't strictly be figured, because there are numberless things that may either singularly or plurally focus his ambitions and passions and whatever all drives him; the expression, and even its interpretation, may, therefore, only be taken subject to subject. Nor can the quality of his expression, I think, be exactly judged, since the thing being judged is principally object within its emanating subject and then only ever migrated into other subjects (or even re-migrated into its original subject), who may be fellow-expressers of similar or whatever kinds and with similar means of expression. Outside the subject, humanly expressions become objects without humanly content; which is to say, further, that music, or any other kind of humanly expression, is derived from the human subject, and is therefore only understandable as a content-full human expression by the human subject (though that may not always be the case, as it may be said that people very often read meaning or non-meaning into things that may, without them, have had meaning or non-meaning, or which weren't intended to have meaning or were intended to have meaning; you may take of inference what you like). Because humanity, being of individuals or groups of people, amounts a plurality of interpretations toward its own expressions; and because interpreting oneself, as, for instance, interpreting one's own thoughts, is the hard problem that augments prejudices toward more prejudices to understand itself: I find it hard to believe that expressions are exactly or at all understandable and therefore strictly and rightly judicable, that being if adjudication attempts to attain truth from what it's adjudicating, and because there is more of a chance (if we believe that there is an absolute and objective nature within the intersubjective plurality for each expression) to be wrong, there being more wrong answers than right answers to choose from in one's own judgments and its reason (that reason, furthermore, being a reason that was largely inherited from other reasoners who dealt with the same or similar issues, and ever on in regress), and since we know so little about our reason and the answers it figures to begin with. And it may even be admitted that there may not be any right or wrong answers, or any answers at all, if we believe that any concepts invented by man, like subject and object, are essentially false or otherwise absolutely can't be known in a meaningful way, given the limited capacities of our experiencing, knowing, and conceptualizing edifices. For this, I may say that there are an incredible number of reasons why a person may decide to express themselves, whether for emotive reasons or more practical reasons, a combination of the two, or for whatever reasons elsewise; and that once they have expressed themselves (this may depend on their mode of expression), there may be an equal or similar or greater number of interpretations by which to either understand or misunderstand (or therein, too, to understand) the expression; and that, therefore, adjudicating something, especially something that isn't explicit with fact-bearing claims or any evident truths, or isn't discovered to be absolutely true, is impossible to do, if the intent of the adjudication is, again, to render itself truth and honesty. That's not, however, to say that there isn't an absolute truth within the intersubjective sphere of an expression's existence; but that given the enormity and endless diversity of it and its interpretations, its potential vagueness and even its implicit meaninglessness, if that could be the case, it may not be possible to say anything truthful or exact about it, and that may even be the case for the original expresser. The value of adjudication is, I believe, to learn from the accumulated prejudices of others, to refine one's own prejudices, and maybe then to attain something more than what has been prejudiced and prejudiced against; and I believe, furthermore, that there is likely something to be learned from anybody, unless it's in redundancy, or maybe even then, too, whether they're more learned or less learned than was hoped or imagined. This may not be the nicest thing to read, but it seems to me to be, possibly, the most honest. And in any case, people may decide their own reasons for doing anything, in whatever mode of reasoning they may attain to; and others will counter-reason them if they find it wrong; and they, too, will be counter-reasoned; and so on, and so forth; and people will forget and people will learn - until either nothing is gained, or everything is gained, or something significant of both is gained, though we may all be entirely defunct before the attainment of any great truth or significance is had, or whatever variable that may be imagined. The point of art is, I believe, what Wilde said above, 'self-development', which may be self-understanding or any other kind of personal growth - and not just as a 'correspondence between the essential idea of the accidental existence; it is not the resemblance of shape into shadow, or of the form mirrored in the crystal to the form itself: it is no Echo coming from a hollow hill, any more than it is the well of silver water in the valley that shows the Moon to the Moon and Narcissus to Narcissus. Truth in Art is the unity of a thing with itself: the outward rendered expressive of the inward...' (ibid, pg 67) - which is to say, self-realization, or self-becoming, and everything that that may infer. However it is, I find much of the issue difficult to deal with, especially in this extreme mode of skepticism. My head feels properly muddled for it.

Moderators do what their title means: they moderate. They go through the forums to make sure users aren't being too gratuitous or mean, or at least don't break rules of the Code of Conduct. Otherwise, we're just active members, doing whatever - like running or regulating competitions. Mods have no other powers. Admins, on the other hand, can do all of that and change site appearence and functionality. johnbucket, for instance, just moved Advertisements and Member Announcements from the Board section to the Community section to give it more prominence and utility for users: ChristianPerrotta recently advertised some of his published pieces there. And chopin could create a Competition Winners folder if he were interested or had the time - neither of which I'm very sure about, since he doesn't often respond. Safe to say, anyhow, that moderators nudge admins frequently to change things, though sadly we don't have any magical powers to force them to make those changes. These are the essential differences between mods and admins.

@danishali903: Mods can't do anything about it. Only admins can change site code and appearance, and most all functionality. Hopefully chopin reads these suggestions, he, not only being an admin, but the owner of this site.

@johnbucket: Sure; we could make a project of it.

@johnbucket: How would you remake it to be more effective?

Young Composers Music Appreciation Thread This thread is dedicated to the construction of a list of composers and their works for forum newcomers and regulars, interested in expanding their knowledge and appreciation of classical music, to explore: to ultimately discover the multifarious historical and cultural contributions of these composers, and their effects on the individual and the mass public. My hope is that this thread may give a little more utility to this site. Because the list is unfinished - many composers are missing, as are many great works - I ask that anybody looking through it will contribute by pointing out those missing composers and works - what and who you believe are worth listening to and appreciating - below, and linking references about them to show that what you say is the case (I'd like to avoid as many errors as possible). I also ask that, if you see any errors in the primary list, or spot an unneeded lack of information, that you point them out, too, and post links showing why thus and so is either not the case, must for some reason be changed, or why this and that must be added. I can't do the whole thing alone, and I will need your help if this thread is to have any utility at all. (See below for the download.) Also, I want to make an intermediate list of composers for newcomers to explore: composers, obscure or famous, believed to be essential to know in order to have a healthy understanding of classical music culture, as it has been and as it is now; not conforming to or unnecessarilly accomodating the general listener's, or the typical new listener's, prejudices of classical music, but to show how and what classical music is to classical musicians and established classical music lovers. This list may be changed, also; composers may be added and taken away, about which you may make your arguments below. And it goes without saying that this thread is also under construction: forgive its nacency - and the poster's own prejudices, as they've not yet been put in check. Intermediate List of Composers Adams, John Coolidge (American, 1947-) Alfvén, Hugo Emil (Swedish, 1872-1960) Antheil, George (American, 1900-1959) Bach, Johann Sebastian (German, 1685-1750) Barber, Samuel Osmond II (American, 1910-1981) Bax, Arnold Edward Trevor Sir (British, 1883-1953) Beethoven, Ludwig van (German, 1770-1827) Bingen, Hildegard von (German, 1098-1179) Brahms, Johannes (German, 1833-1897) Braunfels, Walter (German, 1882-1954) Chadwick, George Whitefield (American, 1854-1931) Davies, Peter Maxwell Sir (British, 1934-) Debussy, Achille-Claude (French, 1862-1918) Dvořák, Antonín Leopold (Czech, 1841-1904) Elgar, Edward William (English, 1857-1934) Enescu, George (Romanian, 1881-1955) Franck, César-Auguste-Jean-Guillaume-Hubert (Franco-Belgian, 1822-1890) Glière, Reinhold (Russo-Ukrainian, 1875-1956) Halffter Escriche, Rodolfo (Spanish, 1900-1987) Hindemith, Paul (German, 1895-1963) Khachaturian, Aram Il’yich (Armenian, 1903-1978) Kilar, Wojciech (Polish, 1932-2013) Koechlin, Charles Louis Eugène (French, 1867-1950) Liebermann, Lowell (American, 1961-) Liebermann, Rolf (Swiss, 1910-1999) Lully, Jean-Baptiste (Franco-Italian, 1632-1687) Mahler, Gustav (Judeo-Czech-Austro-Hungarian, 1860-1911) Martinů, Bohuslav (Czech, 1890-1959) Mendelssohn-Bartholdy, Jakob Ludwig Felix (German, 1809-1847) Monteverdi, Claudio Giovanni Antonio (Italian, 1567-1643) Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus (Johannes Chrysostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus) (Austrian, 1756-1791) Nordgren, Pehr Henrik (Finnish, 1944-2008) Nørgård, Per (Danish, 1932-) Novák, Vítězslav (Czech, 1870-1949) Palestrina, Giovanni Pierluigi da (Italian, 1525-1594) Pärt, Arvo (Estonian, 1935-) Penderecki, Krzysztof Eugeniusz (Polish, 1933-) Prokofiev, Sergei Sergeyevich (Russian, 1891-1853) Puccini, Giacomo (Italian, 1858-1924) Purcell, Henry (British, 1659-1695) Rachmaninoff, Sergei Vasilievich (Russian, 1873-1943) Rautavaara, Einojuhani (Finnish, 1928-) Ravel, Joseph-Maurice (French, 1875-1937) Reinecke, Carl Heinrich Carsten (German, 1824-1910) Reznicek, Emil Nikolaus Joseph Freiherr von (Austrian, 1860-1945) Rosenberg, Hilding Constantin (Swedish, 1892-1985) Saint-Saëns, Charles-Camille (Sannois) (French, 1825-1921) Schnittke, Alfred (Russian, 1934-1998) Schönberg (Schoenberg), Arnold (Austrian, 1874-1951) Schubert, Franz Peter (Austrian, 1797-1828) Schulhoff, Erwin (Czech, 1894-1942) Schumann, Robert (German, 1810-1856) Schütz, Heinrich (German, 1585-1672) Scriabin, Alexander Nikolayevich (Russian, 1872-1915) Shostakovich, Dmitri Dmitriyevich (Russian, 1906-1975) Sibelius, Johan Julius Christian 'Jean' (Finnish, 1865-1957) Stenhammar, Carl Wilhelm Eugen (Swedish, 1871-1927) Stockhausen, Karlheinz (German, 1928-2007) Strauss, Johann (Baptist) 'Schanni' II (Austrian, 1825-1899) Strauss, Richard Georg (German, 1864-1949) Stravinsky, Igor Fyodorovich (Russian, 1882-1971) Tchaikovsky, Pyotr Ilyich (Russian, 1840-1893) Tippett, Michael Kemp Sir (British, 1905-1998) Wagner, Wilhelm Richard (German, 1813-1883) Waldteufel, Émile (French, 1837-1915) Weingartner, Paul Felix von, Edler von Münzberg (Croatian-Austro-Hungarian, 1863-1942) Whitacre, Eric (American, 1970-) Williams, Ralph Vaughan (British, 1872-1958) Xenakis, Iannis (Greco-French, 1922-2001) Zemlinsky, Alexander von (Austrian, 1871-1942) Primary List Composers and Works List.pdf

Again, it doesn't matter. It can be re-appropriated for secular purposes and made into an 'independent art'. Definitions are changeable; they change as uses become more prominent. If people were widely to begin composing pieces on secular themes which they termed 'mass', it would eventually be added to the dictionary. And you don't need a Pope for that. And it would simply be mass; or there would be some differentiation, calling this 'Catholic Mass' and this other 'Secular Mass'. However it goes. And the same for 'requiem'.

The definition doesn't matter. As I've made the case for already, these things change: what a symphony was, what a concerto was, what a sonata was, has all changed drastically over time. The same can be done for the musical mass and any other form of music. definitions simply don't matter; they can be remade to fit the artist and his art, rightly and justifiably. To ignore this, you'll have to forgo historical contexts and what it means for ideas to evolve.

There are, again, no reasons for these things to be true. They might not be usable in Catholic or other Christian churches, but they could be elsewhere, in whatever place of mourning and for whoever people accept the grieving artistic impulse by which the music is composed, no matter its 'widespread use' elsewhere and for whatever that means. If offense is given, it is no fault of the mourning and artistic. Fundamentalists will have to put up with a changing world that gives to the liberal and free and censures reactionary royalists. Art must be free beyond the arbitrary demarcations of religious totalitarian sentiment and the fear and frustration it inheres either in its own practitioners or those who it terms to be its enemies. It is fair to shun its convictions and traditions if art becomes more free for it. And here, I think, it is all in the right to remake the requiem mass into a secular expression.

(1)Ideas are rarely steadfast, and never so in the arts. In such a liberal field as music, which depends so greatly on change and progress for its survival and relevance in the world, nothing - neither in theory nor concepts - stays the same. A requiem, like a sonata or symphony, changes through time: not just in structure, but also in meaning and use. Symphonies at one time were strict as absolute music, initially as 'concertos' in ternary form or as introductory pieces; then, growing in wealth, now as 'symphonies' as we commonly know them, serious ones consisting of four movements, chamber ones and the like sometimes consisting of three (as with Mozart's 'Salzburg Symphonies'), in the way of the old concertos, and never using anything but the basic, small baroque and classical orchestras. Beethoven introduced new instruments, and with them greatly enlarged the orchestra; he also made the symphony into program music in the 'Pastoral' Sixth, in which he also introduced a fifth movement, deviating entirely from tradition of three or four depending on the context and patronage. Romantic composers followed much in the same way: if not making the music strictly programmatic, but adding and taking away movements depending on their need to either express themselves or advance their art. One of the last great Romantic composers, Mahler, had symphonies ranging from two movements (the Eighth, 'Symphony of a Thousand') to six movements (the Third); Richard Strauss composed his Alpine Symphony as a continuous piece consisting of twenty-two programmatic sections; Bax composed all of his symphonies in three movements; Liszt composed his A Faust Symphony in three character pictures as it's described, and his A Symphony to Dante's Divine Comedy in similar ternary form, and in even more programmatic fashion; and many composers today often compose their symphonies in single continuous movements, as some of their predecessors did: eg, Barber's First; Havergal Brian's symphonies 5, 6, 8, 9, 10, 12-17, 24, and 31; Roy Harris's symphonies 3, 7, 8 and 11; Lutosławski's Third and Fourth symphonies; Nørgård's Second; Allan Pettersson's symphonies 6, 7, and 9; Willem Pijper's First and Third symphonies; Shostakovitch's Second and Third symphonies; Scriabin's Fourth and Fifth symphonies; Kurt Weill's First; and so on. Would you say that these masters were wrong in calling their pieces 'symphonies' on account of their divergence from history? And we can't forget that the earliest symphonies were called 'concertos' of various sorts and otherwise used as introductory pieces: given the precedence of this evolution alone, I don't see why one might not eventually call a piano sonata a 'Symphony'; the reverse has certainly been done, as with, for instance, Godowsky's Symphonic Metamorphosis on 'Die Fledermaus', Alkan's Symphony for Solo Piano, and which Liszt tried to do, and variably succeeded, in his transcriptions of Beethoven's symphonies. It would take a fair amount of arrogance, it seems to me, to say 'yes', that these great composers were wrong in their artistic estimations. I certainly wouldn't call them all 'symphonyesque' or 'sonataesque' or 'requiemesque': they are simply what they are by the arbitration of the artist and either his needs of expression or the needs of his art; and for the mass of the public and more discerning folk alike there's little use of doubt but in reactionary obstinacy, since their pieces incorporate elements of all that they describe: for instance, that the piece be symphonic (sounding all together), that it sometimes depicts something in program, and that it has a certain form, a form which the words 'symphony' and 'sonata' and even 'requiem' don't absolutely include. Evolution is in particulars and technicalities, here, and all that's described points the way toward an artistic liberality that is at once necessary and then justified. I'll refer back to my previous post about what all I believe of the evolution of the requiem. (2) There's no reason why the mass can't be re-appropriated for contemporary purposes. There's precedence for this, too. For instance in Schubert's German Mass, D 872, which doesn't use liturgical texts, but rather the religious poems of Johann Philipp Neumann. I can't say I understand your rigid Tory attitudes toward change in music, even if that change is a reexamination and re-utilization of old materials, musical and non-musical, or forms for new purposes. There's no reason why the traditional mass can't be reconfigured to be secular or variably non-liturgical. There's no reason why a requiem has to subsist within the purist strictures of the Catholic Missa pro defunctis. There is no reason why a piano can't make a symphony and an orchestra can't make a sonata - but, again, only by silly, purist, reactionary obstinacy. This is something to be gotten over.

What do you make of Brahms's A German Requiem, then, which doesn't use the traditional Catholic requiem text, but rather excerpts from Luther's German translated Bible? or Britten's War Requiem, which is non-liturgical and greatly deviates from the Latin text? or Stravinsky's Requiem Canticles which, though it has parts of the Latin Requiem Mass, doesn't actually incorporate the 'Requiem aeternam dona eis Domine' from which the form gets its name, and is also not strictly liturgical? or Takemitsu's Requiem for String Orchestra, which doesn't use any text or even a choir? Requiem, these days, only means 'death mass'. There's no rule in music stating that a requiem be exclusive to specified and accepted religious texts, or any text of any particularity, or any text at all - except that it be about the dead, and as a 'hymn, composition, or service'. Its evolution has given enough precedent to move away from the original texts and forms while still holding the word meaningfully to its definition and purpose; the greater and older traditions of the piece aren't now very relevant. All that's necessary is to compose a piece in which the singular sentiment of mourning or celebration of the dead is concentrically expressed in the music itself. There might as well be a secular death mass now; it certainly doesn't need to be Catholic or variously religious otherwise. The sentiment can even be abstract, made only in sounds, absent any real language or words; but only feelings elicited by sound-symbols transmitted from the instruments to the audience, unspecific sensations of the meanings of one's experiences with death and the living lost - which no text or person has any real right to or authority on in absolute terms. It is a human experience beyond ideology and belief, and nearly beyond understanding, if not literally beyond cognizance. The experience ought to be expressed in any way possible, if only to bid a distant, removed, personal and meaningful acquaintance of it, and maybe then a newly wound thread of knowledge and nascent acceptance of it and its place between us and posterity.

Are there any workable translations? Could you use some more contemporary revolutionary texts? I here there's quite a lot of political discord in your country. Maybe now's the time to start looking for newer material...

Are there any Brazilian secular texts? Some long poems or something from Independence days to use? You could compose a Brazilian Requiem, the central theme(s) or leitmotiv(s) of which could be a corruption of some phrase(s) of the Hino Nacional Brasileiro... Ordem e Progresso... or what other civil and national and culturally meaningful texts and mottos...