4'33"

Making scraggy up again, eh Tokke?

Sorry but there's no authority on what modernism is or even a real definition. Hell it could be a time period (start of the 20th century) to a social definition of what modern is (which changes.)

But hey, keep on hatin', we'll keep on laughing.

No authority except history. Modernism has happened enough in the past that we can define the common characteristics that create "moderist" composers. Just because YOU think that moderism isn't the detachment of emotions from music doesn't mean that the rest of the world does.

I'm not hating, I'm retelling history. When was the last time you heard more moderist pieces played over classical/romantic pieces in the concert hall? 1950? I wonder if that has ever happened.

The purpose of music is to open up the emotional ties between the spirit and the body. The spirit controls how we react to emotions and music, being the most spiritual of all art forms, must also be the most emotional to be sucessful.

Well I agree that most people gauge their appreciation of music by how much - and in what way - it moves them. I tend to do the same thing.

The purpose of music is to open up the emotional ties between the spirit and the body. The spirit controls how we react to emotions and music, being the most spiritual of all art forms, must also be the most emotional to be sucessful.

You realize though, Justin, that by mentioning spirit your implying a religious connotation to music itself - which, while many cultures do have religious philosophies concerning the nature of music, music as solely spiritual in origin is flawed in and of itself (in many ways). Personally, I think emotional inference in music is more drawn from two facets: the primal nature of humans AND human communication. Rhythm, for instance is very primal. Cultures have used rhythm to great degree in many, many instances (to the point now where rhythm is sort of second-nature). Another instance, is our desire to recreate the sung human voice via man-made instruments (flutes, lower strings, etc.). Perhaps one could also add a third in the mix as well - as said on other posts - music also is greatly moved by man's discovery of the world around him: good example, the division of a vibrating string (AND even better, the technology behind the theramin.) All these things add to the aural landscape and ultimately create intimate connections with the listener.

No authority except history. Modernism has happened enough in the past that we can define the common characteristics that create "moderist" composers. Just because YOU think that moderism isn't the detachment of emotions from music doesn't mean that the rest of the world does.

I'm not hating, I'm retelling history. When was the last time you heard more moderist pieces played over classical/romantic pieces in the concert hall? 1950? I wonder if that has ever happened.

Oh ho ho, really?

I'm calling you on it, then! Start posting these "characteristics" you claim make a composer "modernist," yea? Furthermore, explain why what the "rest of the world" thinks matters at all UNLESS they are all musicologists and/or are actually historical researchers and people who know anything about this.

But hey, I'm pretty sure that pieces such as Ligeti's Requiem or Penderecki's Threnody, among many MANY other compositions are all entirely unemotional. Including Messiaen's quartet for the end of times and many, many others. Right. Oh wait, if they were to HAVE emotion in them they're not modern you say? Not REALLY modern at least? Hilarious.

And yeah, there are festivals for new music where a LOT of 20th century (AND NEW music!) music gets played (and, GASP, nothing else!) and there were (and are) plenty of those here in Europe and around the world. I guess we have to ignore those, eh?

Hell, just searching google for "Contemporary music festival" gets you TONS of results from places as varied as Norway, Poland, Cuba and I personally have been to more than a couple of those myself in South America. Imagine all the ones that aren't listed on google (local events organized by the conservatoirs, music schools, etc etc) which I have also seen much of.

But nah, let's ignore all of this (and the thousands upon thousands of people that participate in them worldwide) for your idea of "history."

I wasn't mentioning the spirit from a religious standpoint though that element can exist. I was refering just to the human condition of having an inner purpose beyond simply survival. If that's religion, so be it; if it's not, then thats ok too. The point is that emotion and music are inseprable for it to be sucessful.

Oh ho ho, really?

Yup. Really. :thumbsup:

I'm calling you on it, then! Start posting these "characteristics" you claim make a composer "modernist," yea? Furthermore, explain why what the "rest of the world" thinks matters at all UNLESS they are all musicologists and/or are actually historical researchers and people who know anything about this.

u shure? wat r u takin bout?

But hey, I'm pretty sure that pieces such as Ligeti's Requiem or Penderecki's Threnody, among many MANY other compositions are all entirely unemotional. Including Messiaen's quartet for the end of times and many, many others. Right. Oh wait, if they were to HAVE emotion in them they're not modern you say? Not REALLY modern at least? Hilarious.

But then the question is, are these pieces truly Moderist? One could argue both ways. So I don't understand the hilarity.

And yeah, there are festivals for new music where a LOT of 20th century (AND NEW music!) music gets played (and, GASP, nothing else!) and there were (and are) plenty of those here in Europe and around the world. I guess we have to ignore those, eh?

Hell, just searching google for "Contemporary music festival" gets you TONS of results from places as varied as Norway, Poland, Cuba and I personally have been to more than a couple of those myself in South America. Imagine all the ones that aren't listed on google (local events organized by the conservatoirs, music schools, etc etc) which I have also seen much of.

But nah, let's ignore all of this (and the thousands upon thousands of people that participate in them worldwide) for your idea of "history."

That's a skewed sample. You're searching "contemporary music festival." Well, then the only music that comes up is "contemporary music" (which isn't necessarily "modernist" adding to the confusion). I'm talking about the concert hall in general. Do a survey of all the major orchestras as Mueller did for every concert at every major symphony orchestra in the United States from 1850 to 1950. 100 years is plenty of time for a trend. Guess what he found out? There are six composers that dominate the repertoire (about 75% of all music is by these composers): Beethoven, Brahms, Tchaikovsky, Mozart, Bach, Handel. The highest up contemporary on the list was Schoenberg at just under 0.5% of the repertoire. Today, the trends are not much different. It would be fascinating seeing a similar study done for the 20th century. Is modernist music the dominating force? Not likely at all.

Also notice the places that these contemporary music festivals happen isn't in America. They happen in Europe which is more sympathetic to modernism (which could be arguably a sociological reasoning because of the secularism of Europe but that's another discussion for another thread).

I'm calling you on it, then! Start posting these "characteristics" you claim make a composer "modernist," yea? Furthermore, explain why what the "rest of the world" thinks matters at all UNLESS they are all musicologists and/or are actually historical researchers and people who know anything about this.

In case you forgot how to read, here it is again. Read it carefully and play along! It'll be fun, come on.

Furthermore, explain why what the "rest of the world" thinks matters at all UNLESS they are all musicologists and/or are actually historical researchers and people who know anything about this.

Sorry I thought you believed in freedom? Are you suggesting that what a select few people think is good should be prioritised, and what people actually enjoy should be demonised/ignored? Isn't that intellectual, elitist-fascism? It's the kind of thing I would expect from Stalin or another dictator, not somebody who keeps rattling on about how great it is that we all have our 'freedom'.

Obviously somebody or a party of people has to decide what is going to be played where and when, but such a person who does so only for their own selfish sake has no right to be in any position of authority.

Sorry I thought you believed in freedom? Are you suggesting that what a select few people think is good should be prioritised, and what people actually enjoy should be demonised/ignored? Isn't that intellectual, elitist-fascism? It's the kind of thing I would expect from Stalin or another dictator, not somebody who keeps rattling on about how great it is that we all have our 'freedom'.

Obviously somebody or a party of people has to decide what is going to be played where and when, but such a person who does so only for their own selfish sake has no right to be in any position of authority.

That's hilarious. You're telling me that believing in freedom is treating the things people who have a made a career of researching and advancing the field of music knowledge (and humanities in general!) say as the same as the average joe who knows jack scraggy and blurts out complete ignorant nonsense?

That's brilliant.

Sorry I thought you believed in freedom? Are you suggesting that what a select few people think is good should be prioritised, and what people actually enjoy should be demonised/ignored? Isn't that intellectual, elitist-fascism? It's the kind of thing I would expect from Stalin or another dictator, not somebody who keeps rattling on about how great it is that we all have our 'freedom'.

Obviously somebody or a party of people has to decide what is going to be played where and when, but such a person who does so only for their own selfish sake has no right to be in any position of authority.

You make it sound like life and death. When it comes to technical issues with jargon, it's often wise to listen to those who have made their living studying the stuff. These people's opinions should be prioritized to the front and we should listen to them. It's fine to disagree with the opinion, but it's not ok to completely dismiss them.

Justin Tokke, you do know that 4'33" is more of a breakaway from modernism than a part of it, right? (It could really even be classified as small-m minimalist!) Your idea of what modernism is is just plain wrong. (When did Prokofiev or Berg try to take emotion out of music, really? You're just making up crap and trying to sound intellectual. You're essentially redefining modernism for your own purposes. It's like the parent whose kid is in a marching band who says, "Oh look, everyone except little Johnny is out-of-step!")

And by the way, postmodernism has tons of elements of modernism in it. It's not just revivalism. In fact, it's not revivalism. At all.

lol... I wish I had the Corbin stamp... the amount of fail in this thread is simply staggering.

I suggest moar lurking. It'll do a lot of people some good.

I think Gardener's post mostly neutralizes the fail, though.

I think Gardener's post mostly neutralizes the fail, though.

It only works if people actually read it though. There doesn't seem to be a whole lot of that going around unfortunately. :(

I think there are two major elements in that piece:

One is the direct musical one, that has been mentioned: An incentive to listen to sounds created without intention as music. Letting people realize how "musically rich" their whole life may be, even without listening to any "music".

The other may be more a conceptual critique of the cultural functions of "concerts" and "composers". It is actually very relevant that this is a piece written by a composer and played in a concert (even with a performer), even though certainly none of these would be absolute necessities for a mere enjoyment of sounds. It's the difference between a wall on which hangs an empty picture frame and just an empty wall.

It raises the whole question of why we seek to elevate one sound above the other by placing it in a certain, fixed cultural context (concert hall, audience, stage, performer, certain rituals like bowing/clapping etc.), why we place such importance in musical authorship and roles ("there must be a composer and he is clearly separated from the performer and the audience"), and why we need to delimit sounds by fixing durations and constraints in a score in order to appreciate them as music. In short: It's the question of what effect such cultural structures and borders have on our musical experience. He does show this specifically by following these traditional constraints, but in a way that makes them stand out as "weird".

The somewhat derogatory comment of Cage "making a fool of himself" came once up, but actually I think it's even true to some degree, but in a good sense. He is demeaning himself as the "Musical Monarch" of "his" music, the sole author and "artist", as it was rather customary in the time before him. The ironic thing of course is that by doing this, he's actually giving himself quite a strong musical position based on his fame (or infamy) for this piece, which again goes in the complete opposite direction. But I find it's exactly this ambiguity between rather contradictory elements that makes the piece interesting.

Last but certainly not least you have to read the piece in the context of its time. It was the time of the Darmstadt School in Europe, of strict serialism, of very fixed ideas about "what music should be", and Cage broke away from such concepts radically, which in fact later also influenced many proponents of the Darmstadt School (like Stockhausen) themselves. Bluntly put, it's all about the cultural debate about strict formality, constraints, rules and an idea of music that is very much based on notes and musical "atoms" - and a very free, anarchic music that questions all of its constraints and focuses on "random sounds" in all their natural richness. It was this extreme duality that might have created the foundation of what would later become an inclusion and acceptance of many different lines of thought, and a bit later postmodernism.

If this piece was written today it probably wouldn't have the significance as in 1960, simply because our musical environment has opened up somewhat already.

Quoted for awesomeness.

That's hilarious. You're telling me that believing in freedom is treating the things people who have a made a career of researching and advancing the field of music knowledge (and humanities in general!) say as the same as the average joe who knows jack scraggy and blurts out complete ignorant nonsense?

That's brilliant.

No I'm not. I'm saying that the people who have influence in the field of musical and artistic performance should take people's views as well as their own into consideration.

I don't think musicologists should be ignored and that's not what I'm trying to say. It was simply aimed at your statement, that people do not deserve to have any input whatsoever into their own society unless they have a degree in musicology.

No I'm not. I'm saying that the people who have influence in the field of musical and artistic performance should take people's views as well as their own into consideration.

I don't think musicologists should be ignored and that's not what I'm trying to say. It was simply aimed at your statement, that people do not deserve to have any input whatsoever into their own society unless they have a degree in musicology.

I said what I said as a reply to:

Just because YOU think that moderism isn't the detachment of emotions from music doesn't mean that the rest of the world does.

Which is really a silly appeal to popularity fallacy than any real argument. That was the point of the distinction. It doesn't matter much if 99.9% of the world believes in X if X isn't true or even reasonable in closer inspection, it simply means that 99.9% would be wrong.

So, before you reply to stuff, please do read the context and don't quote mine. Nobody likes a quote miner.

Can we like, get this thread closed? Honestly, it's a waste of bandwidth...

If you don't understand the work, just don't listen to it! (And there's only one way to do that...hehe...but don't take that way.)

If you don't understand the work, just don't listen to it! (And there's only one way to do that...hehe...but don't take that way.)

Someone should do a photoshoop: add a little tag to a revolver which says "The only escape from 4'33". Hey, you started!

That's a skewed sample. You're searching "contemporary music festival." Well, then the only music that comes up is "contemporary music" (which isn't necessarily "modernist" adding to the confusion). I'm talking about the concert hall in general. Do a survey of all the major orchestras as Mueller did for every concert at every major symphony orchestra in the United States from 1850 to 1950. 100 years is plenty of time for a trend. Guess what he found out? There are six composers that dominate the repertoire (about 75% of all music is by these composers): Beethoven, Brahms, Tchaikovsky, Mozart, Bach, Handel. […]

One should be careful when talking about "skewed samples" not to fall into the very same trap. Orchestras are in no way a neutral constellation which gives accurate results here. Orchestras are a very typical medium of classical/romantic music, but are much less important in the "modern" developments of the 20th century you seem to be referring to. Sure, most of those composers also wrote for orchestra now and then, but smaller ensembles, that often lie between traditional "chamber music" and "orchestra" generally became much more dominant.

The symphony orchestra also is in many cases one of the most conservative musical bodies these days. The rehearsal times are extremely short, which means it's much easier to perform a piece all musicians already know and have played before, and a majority of the musicians come from a very traditional instrumental education that focused on music before the 20th century. If the study was done with other kinds of ensemble, it might have turned out somewhat differently.

But yes, of course you are right that "older" music gets performed more than contemporary (or "modernist") music, as a whole. As much as classical music has a smaller audience than pop music. I think most of us would agree with those things. The point however is not that one thing gets played more, but simply that it does get played and has an interested audience that is probably larger than many people think.

I think that both Justin and SSC have gotten this thread off topic.

The point of the matter is that 4'33" is no real piece of music. Music, according to Edgard Varese, is "organized sound." A piece with absolute silence in not organized whatsoever. Music, according to Schaeffer "has decays; it is granular; it has attacks; it fluctuates." It is likewise evident that 4'33" does none of these things. Webster's dictionary claims that music is "the science or art of ordering tones or sounds in succession, in combination, and in temporal relationships to produce a composition having unity and continuity." This, obviously, is not even close to what Cage developed.

In response to the people that claim that people that criticize Cage's challenge of the traditional concept of music are uncultured swine, I say that they are reading way too far into Cage's work. You can give 4'33" whatever philosophical, psychological, and metaphysical reasons you want, but in the end, you are still listening to people coughing and shifting in their seats, uncomfortable with the awkward cacophony of quiet noise.

The point of the matter is that 4'33" is no real piece of music.

Beethoven's 5th symphony is also no real piece of music. Why?

Cuz I said so.

Someone lock this thread already, before more people decide to...erm, "win" at not knowing jack scraggy about modern art or anything at all whatsoever.

/me finds this thread descending into the bowels of amusing and advocates for it to stay open if only for hilarity's sake.

/me finds this thread descending into the bowels of amusing and advocates for it to stay open if only for hilarity's sake.

Does that mean you'll finally get around to addressing this?

I'm calling you on it, then! Start posting these "characteristics" you claim make a composer "modernist," yea? Furthermore, explain why what the "rest of the world" thinks matters at all UNLESS they are all musicologists and/or are actually historical researchers and people who know anything about this.

Cuz that'd be fun!

Music, according to Edgard Varese, is "organized sound." A piece with absolute silence in not organized whatsoever.

1. What makes Varese right?

2. What makes you think 4'33" requires absolute silence? In fact, if you believe so, you are completely wrong. 4'33" includes decays, attacks, fluctuations, that are different for every performance and don't come from the performer.

By the way, I wouldn't trust Webster's Dictionary on music, since it isn't a specialized music dictionary.