"I do not believe...

...that I can call back composers from the present insanity of their work." ~J.J. Fux, from his Author's Forward to Gradus ad Parnassum.

Discuss.

I don't get it.

Jay Jay gently caresses?

Who?

:P

APPLE CHEESECAKE AIRPLANETREE

Discuss.

Well, I guess it means: I do not believe that I can make composers write good music again (call them back) who are now composing insane music. Or more simply: The music of today sucks and I can't do anything about it.

Nice thing to bring up actually. Many people seem to think that suddenly, in the 20th century, composers have abandonned the proper path of music and are suddenly writing what nobody wants to hear, whereas all music of the past we now revere was always loved by everyone.

Wow you mean people reacted negatively to things EVEN BEFORE the 20th and 21st century!?!?

WHAT A SURPRISE!

I'm not sure how much of a discussion is there to be had at all, this isn't 4chan. You don't just dump something and expect people to discuss it (read: LOL flamebait.)

So, provide a context in which this is relevant and maybe someone will take it seriously.

Or post a pic of water melons.

Yea, there's nothing to discuss. People always reacted badly to new music. Perhaps Fux was too old fashioned. OR, as some have suggested, Fux himself (by way of his text) reined in some of the 'insanity' of the composers of future generations. (We all know Mozart, Haydn, Beethoven, Hans Zimmer studied Fux. Wait. Not sure about that last one there. Is he even a composer?)

Daniel: Hans Zimmer? Nooo, he's a fisherman. And I think he studied with Fux :X

I was rather hoping that, as Gardener began to, people would discuss Fux's attitude in terms of our modern individual ontological demands on music. Too much to hope for here, I guess.

Of course people have always disagreed with things, disliked music, whatever. But the ontological demands that we as a culture place on music are far different from the demands of Fux's time, and that bears thinking about. For instance - why is expositional material in classical music often not repeated now? In Mozart's time, it would of course be repeated, and probably with a little bit of improvisation, if it was in a solo context. What IS the "insanity" that Fux talks about, and today, what does it mean? Which music, for us, joins the ranks of the insane? Can Fux's absolutist view of music even be applied at all? To where can it be applied? Is this application deliberate, or reactionary? How does acclimation affect us, in the context of our musical views? How does saturation affect us, in the context of our musical views, especially as relates to the comparative musical saturation of Fux's time?

Any of these questions can lead to many more related ones. And I realize that a lot of people are more interested or comfortable in just tossing a flippant dismissal off than actually delving into the deeper implications of something that seems archaic and obvious. But thinking never hurt anyone.j

And maybe the fact that some of us can't "take it seriously" without context helps answer some of the questions above. What prevents you from making your own context? From treating the given material in a way that it resonates with your own personal experience? Why does this piece of information not give itself implications in ways that other pieces of information do (see above on saturation)?

And maybe the fact that some of us can't "take it seriously" without context helps answer some of the questions above. What prevents you from making your own context? From treating the given material in a way that it resonates with your own personal experience? Why does this piece of information not give itself implications in ways that other pieces of information do (see above on saturation)?

For one, I have no idea what Fux meant with that, you don't give a historical context and I don't feel like researching it on my own. Speaking of which, it's a seemingly random statement and it has no depth because it can mean anything you want it to mean without any fixed context.

So all it really is, is an invitation to ramble on something which is as well uncertain and unclear. I'll pass, thx.

It'd be similar to me posting "Ducks are the best music." and saying "discuss!" then accusing people of not taking it seriously. I'm sorry, it doesn't matter much that Fux said it, it's still a random statement which might as well mean nothing without a real context.

Seems to me you over-thought this and expected people to read your mind. You should've posted what you posted above in your first post, then maybe it would've been more interesting. Now it's not helping much, I have no idea what any of what you said has to do with Fux' quote at all.

I mean, uh, yeah music has changed a lot since then! That's... not very debatable. If the question is why did stuff change then, well, if we'll turn this into a sociology study then why not just say so right away?

As for what prevents me from making my own context is the same thing that prevents me from interpreting your post as a personal attack on the people's republic of China and my mom. Communication doesn't really work without at least some sort of basic context that is shared by people engaging in the whole process.

I can as well take Fux's quote to be entirely satire/irony/sarcasm, and that he was actually totally in favor of what was going on. Hell he himself was insane! Who knows? Who cares?

So, yeah. I stand by what I said before, I don't think it's very interesting and you should've probably formulated it better rather than randomly dumping the quote and expecting what you predicted to happen.

And I realize that a lot of people are more interested or comfortable in just tossing a flippant dismissal off than actually delving into the deeper implications of something that seems archaic and obvious. But thinking never hurt anyone.

I did actually answer some of your questions.

Like I say: Fux was probably reacting to the excesses or laxness in the music of his day. Not sure how repeating an exposition has much to do with that. I think that, simply, our boredom threshold is now very small - due to all the constant multimedia bombardment that we all undergo. Of course hearing things twice helps stick things in the memory, but, as modern composers, we can find other ways of doing that without using verbatim repeats.

This is all guesswork, but it's answering a very vague question/statement anyway.

For one, I have no idea what Fux meant with that, you don't give a historical context and I don't feel like researching it on my own. Speaking of which, it's a seemingly random statement and it has no depth because it can mean anything you want it to mean without any fixed context.

So all it really is, is an invitation to ramble on something which is as well uncertain and unclear. I'll pass, thx.

Seems to me you over-thought this and expected people to read your mind. You should've posted what you posted above in your first post, then maybe it would've been more interesting. Now it's not helping much, I have no idea what any of what you said has to do with Fux' quote at all.

I guess you've never had an English class in which the professor made a statement and told you to freewrite about what it meant? I once had the line "A woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle." Do I need context to interpret that? No. I discuss what those words alone mean to me. In this instance, I took my immediate reaction, which was "A fish has no need for a bicycle, therefore women can survive without men" and looked for the exact opposite interpretation, which was "A fish does not need a bicycle because it is an underdeveloped creature, and lacks the proper refinements to be able to appreciate a bicycle. Likewise, women lack the proper adaptation and ability to appreciate men." I did it in jest, but had my instructor told me to interpret it in a feminist context I would not have said that.

I know personal anecdotes and analogies don't matter to you SSC, but for the rest of the world that doesn't need everything clear-cut and totally explained 100% of the time, I hope that helps as to why the original post is actually useful, if one just takes a moment to think of what it can mean. Perhaps it is one-dimensional; perhaps it can apply to many disciplines. Perhaps it can be a comment on human nature - how we always see things in rose colored glasses and that nothing we experience seems to be as good.

Who knows? That's why we discuss things. If you are against proper discussion and discovering things (maybe not things about Fux or his quote, but things about yourself) then I would advise you to shut up and stay out of the thread.

Many thanks,

Just a thought,

Hope that helped,

Jamie

*EDIT* the part about shutting up and staying out is only for those who insist on refusing to properly discuss the topic at hand.

"I do not believe that I can call back composers from the present insanity of their work." ~J.J. Fux, from his Author's Forward to Gradus ad Parnassum.

Ignoring the problem of "insanity" in music, since the word choice lends itself to Fux being against the onset of Classicalism...

I feel he makes an interesting, if obvious, point that you can't close an intellectual door once its been opened. Which always makes me curious about stylistic composers...

and i always hated freewriting.

I don't see a reason to dismiss this thread and as I said, it is a nice thing to bring up. But I do see a reason to dismiss this statement of Fux right away, as it stands. I would dismiss any statement that says "the music of today is insane" without giving a more detailed reasoning and it doesn't not matter to me whether the person who said it is a well-known musicologist like Fux, or whether it's gianluca saying "pop music sucks".

If Fux did give a more detailed reasoning, discussing it would be another thing, but like that I'll just put it off as the ranting of a conservative old man who doesn't like things changing. Not because there may or may not have been good reasons for this statement, but because doing otherwise would do unjustice to all the well-argued points less well-known people have raised but aren't discussed.

Who knows? That's why we discuss things. If you are against proper discussion and discovering things (maybe not things about Fux or his quote, but things about yourself) then I would advise you to shut up and stay out of the thread.

I don't really see any other discussion here besides this one, besides that there's just that quote that, like Gardener said, it's damn easy to dismiss and he even gave some really good arguments as to why it should as well be dismissed.

So, the discussion I'm putting forth is that I don't think the quote is worth looking at at all, it's easy to dismiss and it's completely irrelevant to any meaningful discourse about music as it's just "I haet sum musix" except said by someone of relative historical importance.

Why should anyone care? Why make a big deal out of it? Saint-Saens also spewed a lot of poison towards contemporaries of his, as did a lot of other composers. It's not particularly interesting, though maybe their reasons are we have none of that here either.

So, really, I still stand by what I said. He over-thought it, the quote is in itself pretty pointless and if he(or you) want to extrapolate it to other things you(or he) should as well say so and how that would work. That may be worth looking at or talking about.

But seeing as you're(and he is, I guess?) for the whole freewriting thingy, what do you expect? In fact, all of what I've said up to now is pretty much in line with your analogy, I took the quote and I'm questioning the validity of both this thread and the quote's relevance. It's as "in topic" as it'd ever get so if you don't want to acknowledge it as a serious argument or discussion that's not my problem anymore is it?

Trying to encourage discussion and at the same time telling people (me) to shut up is hilarious, I hope you realize that.

Ok, it's quite obvious to me why Mr. Dunn-Rankin even brought that up in the first place. There is too much of that sentiment in this forum and uneducated composers/musicians. They feel insecure with having to cope with new styles and new forms of expression, so they immediately label it as insanity. I'm sure that Schoenberg was labeled as insane throughout his life, but the point is that even Beethoven and Mozart were labeled as insane.

Just because you as a person cannot understand or come to terms with the new doesn't mean that the new is insane. I think that it was a brilliant idea to just dump the quote in the thread and see what sort of answers you would get. As soon as I saw that this thread was created, I pretty much knew that there was going to be an extremely negative and skeptical response.

But then again, that was the point of the quote: to expose the insecurity of people having to cope with new things.

Lesson/moral of the quote: DON'T DISMISS NEW THINGS SIMPLY BECAUSE THEY ARE NEW OR YOU DON'T LIKE IT.

Schoenberg enjoyed a pretty good reputation as a theorist, composer and writer...

But anyways, I think it goes without saying that nonsense prejudice is nonsense. Right?

But anyways, I think it goes without saying that nonsense prejudice is nonsense. Right?

Not always.

Ok, it's quite obvious to me why Mr. Dunn-Rankin even brought that up in the first place. There is too much of that sentiment in this forum and uneducated composers/musicians. They feel insecure with having to cope with new styles and new forms of expression, so they immediately label it as insanity. Just because you as a person cannot understand or come to terms with the new doesn't mean that the new is insane...

That's the problem with the avant garde or those "forging their own styles" -- even the most eclectic artists will be writing works resembling other things, and those things are fundamentally equal, so long as the musicianship is acceptable. There is no arbiter of music to say one style is any better or worse - it is personal preference.

Fux calling classicalism to be "insanity" is correct. According to accepted cultural norms of music, classicalism broke many rules - in the same way that free improv did for 1950s jazz - it was noise, to their ears. However, that it was noise cannot make it inherently "better" music, any more than classical was "better."

A negative attitude towards either stunts the true musical growth that should be sought in music.

Fux calling classicalism to be "insanity" is correct. According to accepted cultural norms of music, classicalism broke many rules - in the same way that free improv did for 1950s jazz - it was noise, to their ears. However, that it was noise cannot make it inherently "better" music, any more than classical was "better."

A negative attitude towards either stunts the true musical growth that should be sought in music.

????????

Source plz?

I don't know what you're calling classicism, but there's the Vienna Classic, before that there's the Mannheim school and the Berlin school, all at the same time you got the Galant Style with H

My lack of history really hurts me here...

I guess if that's what he was referring to, Ignore me. :(

Ok, it's quite obvious to me why Mr. Dunn-Rankin even brought that up in the first place. There is too much of that sentiment in this forum and uneducated composers/musicians. They feel insecure with having to cope with new styles and new forms of expression, so they immediately label it as insanity. I'm sure that Schoenberg was labeled as insane throughout his life, but the point is that even Beethoven and Mozart were labeled as insane.

Just because you as a person cannot understand or come to terms with the new doesn't mean that the new is insane. I think that it was a brilliant idea to just dump the quote in the thread and see what sort of answers you would get. As soon as I saw that this thread was created, I pretty much knew that there was going to be an extremely negative and skeptical response.

But then again, that was the point of the quote: to expose the insecurity of people having to cope with new things.

Lesson/moral of the quote: DON'T DISMISS NEW THINGS SIMPLY BECAUSE THEY ARE NEW OR YOU DON'T LIKE IT.

Well, what about the current seeming trend in academia to dismiss neo-Classical or neo-Romantic music as a non-viable creative option for contemporary composers? They like it, and it's not new. So what stands in the way?

Well, what about the current seeming trend in academia to dismiss neo-Classical or neo-Romantic music as a non-viable creative option for contemporary composers? They like it, and it's not new. So what stands in the way?

... What academia?

Last I heard, postmodern was all the rage, which implied precisely a mix of elements of all styles and generally the whole "everything goes" character. The only people who aren't keen on this are those stuck in the 60s or so.

What isn't very interesting are style recreations, which is something entirely different than neo-romantic/classical/baroque. The "neo" tag usually meant that the style incorporated also new, modern elements and the whole thing was blended.

As far as I know, trend at least here in Europe isn't rejecting neo-romantic or so music, since it fits under the banner of postmodern anyways. But, then, there's a point to make saying writing like in the 60s or Hindemith can be considered a style recreation. Which isn't too surprising to hear, you'll probably get criticized for it no matter where you go if your music sounds as if someone else wrote it.

I really hate it when the term "academia" gets thrown around like that. Big world is big.

At least in the United States, a lot of the members of "academia" ARE stuck in the 60s and 70s, because it was the time that they were trained, and the period of time in which they are most philosophically comfortable.

I think it kind of brings me back to the question of saturation, too. Several of my composition teachers grew up before the digital recording era. They did not listen to pop-music all the time, or classical music. And now, their minds are not used to the quantity of aural information available, and as such, become saturated with it. I can only assume that this is the reason for their rejection of tonal music, mostly in reference to neo-Classical and neo-Romantic styles. I just think that they don't hear the neo in it.

Really weird, considering neo-classic and other "neo" stuff show up around the 30s-40s... So they're stuck in the 60s and blind to whatever came before?

Weeeeeeeird... Glad I don't have to deal with people like that.