Essay on Composition at the Moment

I'm actually impressed at how clearly I expressed my thoughts.

In a perfect world, you would have everyone be more "open-minded" with music. I have no problem with that, but I guess what I need to clarify is that open-mindedness really isn't part of this at all. It's one of those "catch-all" arguments - if people don't like my music or refuse to attend new music concerts, blame them, because they don't have open minds - sure, okay. People could be more accepting than they are... this is true.

But the issue comes down to quality, IN MY OPINION. If a new work is executed with skill and conscious effort to create a convincing effect for the listener (instead of just haphazardly throwing it out there without concern for craft), it creates this picture of composition as though we're all "rebels without a cause" or unconcerned about what we're producing. Then you're sitting back saying people should be more open minded while people are sitting back saying composers should be more concerned about the skill involved in what they produce. I BELIEVE both points of view are correct.

AA's hilarity aside:

To me, it would be ideal if everyone were open to all kinds of music.

Hear hear!

PS:

The fact is, some music is regarded as of higher quality than other music, which is how we can discern between the work of a 5-year-old doodling on some manuscript paper and the work of Mozart.

The 5-year-old's work is probably much more interesting, true.

AA's hilarity aside:

I only drink because the music tells me to... Shostakovich puts a spell on me... I have to seek RUM and VODKA, so sayeth Shosty!

AA, I still don't see the relevancy in whatever argument you are trying to make. I don't understand how you are applying it to the essay and I think you should expound upon the link between your argument and the essay.

AA, I still don't see the relevancy in whatever argument you are trying to make. I don't understand how you are applying it to the essay and I think you should expound upon the link between your argument and the essay.

This is my problem haha.

Regardless of the validity or invalidity of your point, I have no clue how it possibly relates to the present topic. If you could elaborate, that would be grand.

This is my problem haha.

Regardless of the validity or invalidity of your point, I have no clue how it possibly relates to the present topic. If you could elaborate, that would be grand.

It should be obvious by now, he's just taking the chance to say the exact same things he ALWAYS has said over and over and over. It has little to do with the essay and more to do with him being angry at that one time he tried to get an education.

Etc.

AA, I still don't see the relevancy in whatever argument you are trying to make. I don't understand how you are applying it to the essay and I think you should expound upon the link between your argument and the essay.

I think I was more or less addressing Jamie's comments in response to my thoughts about the Essay.

Specifically...

Ideally, EVERYONE should promote an open mind and acceptance of whatever music anyone decides to write. I can't control what others think, only myself. Perhaps I can influence others to be open, but if not, then I'm doing all I can do.

I agree except that promoting an open mind isn't all composition is about... at all. In fact, very little of composition has anything to do with promoting open-mindedness. But to each their own. I guess I should put it another way...

------

People's "lack of open-mindedness" doesn't preclude anyone from adopting any particular style, so long as the composer does it well. If people don't like it and you want them to, either improve your craft within that style, change styles, or come up with your own that works by adding elements from other styles. There's really no other way to view this whole "People should be more open-minded" argument than to say, "What do you expect?"

Authors like the one who wrote this essay don't have to change their opinions just because he's not "open-minded" enough to appreciate your style or cast it in a positive light. Truth be told, I have my opinions, he has his, you all have yours, and there's nothing wrong with any of them. They're just opinions, and they're all valid viewpoints. Because I don't like to listen to electronic music that makes my ears hurt or my brain implode doesn't make me less "open-minded", but there's going to be someone here that will say, "Hey, AA, you're not open-minded enough to appreciate painful music."

Please, there's just a point where you reach realms of absurdity in these styles that confounds any level of musicianship and makes no musical sense whatsoever. This is where I get off the "open-minded" train and get back to reality where others would rather insult one for their unwillingness to appreciate what they just don't like. If you don't like fish and someone accuses you of being close-minded to food, it's obnoxious. Same with music.

Once upon a time, there was this person who decided to write an essay about different styles of music and other random stuff and then submitted it here for it to be evaluated. I evaluated it (quite thoroughly if I might add) and some other people commented and somewhere in it all AA began ranting, spewing irrelevant nonsense about open-mindedness. Then I questioned how AA's rant concerning open-mindedness pertained to the essay, and AA began ranting more about open-mindedness.

My point is, AA, if your argument (which I am tempted to dub the "Open-Mindedness/Nonsensicality Argument") is relevant to the essay, please tell me how. How is your Open-Mindedness/Nonsensicality Argument relevant to the essay?

My point is, AA, if your argument (which I am tempted to dub the "Open-Mindedness/Nonsensicality Argument") is relevant to the essay, please tell me how. How is your Open-Mindedness/Nonsensicality Argument relevant to the essay?

It's... not. It's relevant to the comments of others who base their opinions of the essay on open-mindedness. I'm pretty sure I made this clear when I said...

I think I was more or less addressing Jamie's comments in response to my thoughts about the Essay.

Read. Comprehend. Repeat.

Previous to me saying anything about openmindness you started ranting about 'the institutions being the problem', at which point I explained that the institutions are not the problem, it's people with narrow minds that are the problem.

And I don't know what happened after that.

I could see this topic being closed, but I'd rather that not happen. I think we could probably make some sense of this, and it'd be great to get beeri back in here to comment on what has been said so far. However, if people continue to post drunken rants that are barely barely barely related to anything in the original umbrella of a topic, we might have to split all of that into another topic to help with clarity.

Just a heads up.

:D

If Beeri doesn't want to clarify more clearly what he was trying to say in his essay, I feel like there is no point in commenting further in this thread.

Just a thought

Previous to me saying anything about openmindness you started ranting about 'the institutions being the problem', at which point I explained that the institutions are not the problem, it's people with narrow minds that are the problem.

And I don't know what happened after that.

The way I read it, that's exactly what the essay is addressing, that institutions are the problem. Take this little tidbit...

Claiming intellectual superiority' date=' these atonalists received federal funding on the premise that advanced modern music, like rocket science, must by definition be incomprehensible to the masses. It was a Cold War thing.

Although pockets of this school of thought survive, the ideology is on the decline everywhere except for the ivory towers. Nonetheless, their aesthetic has made a mark on the collective musical tradition and elements of their style remain an indelible part of the literate musical tradition. [/quote']

Am I addressing the whole essay? No, but I am commenting on what at least seems to be a rather large point at issue with people here concerning the essay, this 'Ivory Tower' issue among other things. And if I tend to agree with the author's general explanation of how 'atonalists' infused their intellectual supremacy into modern music education, so be it. And if not liking how that has affected music education appears to you to be "closed-minded", then so be it.

I happen to like a lot of 20th Century works. I just so happen to hate that it takes so much more priority over compositional skills necessary for composers to write something more than 18th Century Fugues and 20th Century Serial works. If it were left in my capable hands, a great deal more time would be spent on the languages of Late Wagner and Early Schoenberg... Brahms and Shostakovich... much more than simply addressing them all in one or two lectures and leaving it at that (and then you had this music, but we don't have time to cover it, we have to move on to UBER-AWESOME 12-tone serialism!!!).

Funny, that's also EXACTLY what this essay points out, quite clearly, if you'll read again.

A well-schooled classical musician is obliged to have learned how to properly voice-lead Bach chorales and how to distinguish between Beethoven’s main and second themes in sonata-form. Astonishingly' date=' this obligation tends to stop there, in the mid 1810s. Even Beethoven’s late music is usually pooh-poohed as too complex to even attempt.

Later composers such as Schubert, Mendelssohn and Schumann are considered borderline. [b']But Brahms, Liszt and (gasp!) Wagner are discouraged as far too complex, because they don’t fit the Classical mold.[/b]

It's a lot of discussion about what composers end up "learning" in composition, a lot of venting about how composers end up coming out of college writing Neoclassical "pooh-pooh" or the other stylistic extreme, whatever that ends up being - but many times lacking the intellectual substance of those composers who inspired these "new" works, let alone some of the very basic elements of these traditional styles.

Elliott Carter wrote incredible music, different, unique... but he also had solid classical training in writing sonatas, fugues, and a variety of other works along with the harmonic languages of composers like Brahms and Wagner. You can see, even in his most non-traditional works, his skill as a composer is because of his training, not just the "open-mindedness" of others.

If Beeri doesn't want to clarify more clearly what he was trying to say in his essay, I feel like there is no point in commenting further in this thread.

Just a thought

I think there is still stuff to be discussed, especially now that AA has clarified where he was coming from.

Your thought was not inappropriate though.

AA - You and Beeri both seem to be generalizing the university system based soley on personal experience. Now, while I understand that personal experience is, in field of secondary education, the only experience we usually have, I also understand that because of this lack of diverse experience, we cannot make broad-sweeping generalizations.

I myself know that we spent a good amount of time on some Wagner in Theory III. I certainly don't feel that late romantic music was glossed over at all. We studied some 12-tone techniques, we delved into set theory, etc. but we also had listening journals, pulling from various styles and musical eras.

To kind of attempt to salvage this wreck, I'm going to elaborate on why I think the quote I ...quoted is basically the summation of the entire article and why it's bad. Though, I'm just going to review it more thoroughly now as well.

Quote goes:

Electronic sampling still can’t imitate the artistry of a human playing an instrument.

The entire article has this tone but what it fails to do is give out which parameters it's judging by. WHEN is electronic sampling going to imitate the artistry, bla bla bla? How is this being judged again?

It's obviously ONLY his opinion, but statements like those without elaboration can be completely ignored since they mean nothing. Yeah, nice to know your opinion, but without knowing what you mean it's pointless. As is the rest of the rant in general. Think of it like reading youtube comments; it may be amusing to see 1 line "lol sux" comments, but they have no place in an essay.

Another quote, to further drive the point home:

The 20th Century is hardly even discussed in conservatory music theory classes— not even established repertoire masters such as Stravinsky, Bartok and Schoenberg. Some exposure is given to their music to acknowledge its existence. But their techniques are rarely studied in depth.

Consequently, many amateur classical composers end up writing what is sometimes referred to as “Grandma Music.”

Hardly? Where? By whom? Why Stravinsky, Bartok and Schoenberg? If they're established then certainly it doesn't look like it according to what you just said. What is "In depth?"

Also, how does any of it imply that the result is "grandma music"? Could you come up with a less flame-bait term? Do you mean that because they're not taught who Schoenberg is (for example), they don't know any better and write so-called "grandma music"? Again, where is this? Aren't they composers studying composition? Where are their teachers? Again, where is this and who's doing it? It CERTAINLY does not speak for the environment in most serious academic institutions.

More:

Attempts to notate the improvisations of jazz greats have proven futile. Nevertheless, some elements of harmony, rhythm and approach translate into classically literate composition.

Futile? Really? Classically literate? Those are some rather extreme points there.

Even worse is:

Classical composers would therefore be wise to learn from the noble simplicity of popular music. Minimalist composers such as Philip Glass and Steve Reich have successfully taken this simplicity and reduced it to absurdity.

Noble simplicity? You're making it sound like you want to make pop music somehow sound "good" on paper contrast to everything else, making it seem that it has only one single redeeming quality. Then the attack on minimalism is completely out of nowhere, specially considering that Reich and Glass have composed a whole lot of music of very different sorts and styles throughout their career. None of which I would find absurd either any more than I would find writing a symphony based entirely on primary triads absurd.

And probably the worst offenders are near the end:

Academic composers insist that there’s no such thing as atonal music, even in Schoenberg. But for practical purposes, if one must take several steps to explain why a piece is actually tonal, it can probably be called atonal. If your grandma would scrunch her face at it, or if people nod and look away slowly while calling it “interesting”— if you can’t hum along to it without sounding like a refugee from an insane asylum— then it can probably be called atonal.

Not that this should be taken as a curse or a derogative term. Atonal music often offers some truly interesting (in the honest sense of the word) timbres and mind-challenging rhythms.

Nevermind all the NEGATIVE references you just made, only to backpedal saying you don't mean it in a bad way and then attempting to give it some credit (and even trying hard to make sure it doesn't read as hilarious as it does.) Did you really think this out before you wrote it or you wrote the first paragraph, realized what you had done and instead of fixing it you just wrote the second one to "make up" for it?

Likewise, if my Grandma was from the 50s-60s generation of experimental music, your example falls on its face. You do realize how old Boulez, Penderecki, etc are right? Caricatures aren't doing this thing any good and you should know better even if you're trying (as you so desperately are) to make it "noob friendly."

Then some bombs get dropped:

This genre is often associated with academia. Eager as always for funding, post-World War II professors at institutions like Harvard and Princeton wrote music so convoluted and complex that only a select few claimed to enjoy it. These connoisseurs effectively labeled everyone else ignorant, as Milton Babbit did in his 1958 essay, “Who Cares if You Listen?”

Claiming intellectual superiority, these atonalists received federal funding on the premise that advanced modern music, like rocket science, must by definition be incomprehensible to the masses. It was a Cold War thing.

Often? By whom? Who is "academia" again? So post world-war II professors wrote music you don't happen to like therefore NOBODY ELSE really can like it (few only "claim" to do so?)

Babbit's essay is ENTIRELY misrepresented unsurprisingly. Babbit addresses some very important points which are still relevant today and, of course, the title wasn't his own. You are at this point almost quote-mining to make your point rather than actually trying to conceal how you despise this music/era/composers. Extremely lame.

As for it being a cold-war thing, that's entirely absurd. Unless by cold-war you mean the entire 20th century as Babbit's essay was not made on a whim, but as a reaction to years of increasing problems between "the public" and what was being produced by composers since the turn of the century.

The other thing you're doing is talking about federal funding. Obviously your hatred goes far enough that you'll bring entirely political/unrelated business into the thing in order to make seem as negative as possible. You indeed want everyone to come away with the idea that they were stupid and horrible (and pretentious and liars!) You're only missing your beloved caricature of the grandma shaking her cane angrily at those "academics" for wasting tax money. Super, very, lame.

But it obviously doesn't stop there:

Although pockets of this school of thought survive, the ideology is on the decline everywhere except for the ivory towers.

Which school of thought? The waste US tax dollars/be pretentious pricks/write music nobody likes school? Straw man if I ever saw one and an absolutely OBVIOUS one at that.

And now some more mud slinging, but a little bit more subtle. Maybe we'll see that grandma caricature again!

Everything from instrument bashing to plant snipping, to screaming naked on stage while throwing mud and balloons at the audience, to sitting soundlessly next to a piano has been passed off as music. At the very least, this kind of music opens listeners’ ears to every single sound as artistic—to find beauty in noise.

"Passed off as music," eh? So you don't think it's really music? Oh, nice Cage reference by the way, at least you didn't imply he wasted tax money. With the way it's written, again, it seems like "Oh well at least something good came out of this scraggy" is the overall idea here, as if it's all dead and gone.

But a mess of static and beeps and sine tones isn’t very useful.

Beautiful, never-before-heard sounds are emerging, making electronic music an exciting field to be in. Combining this with acoustic music of various types could yield limitless possibilities.

What's useful in that sense? Mozart (ha ha ha ha)?

And the second bit sounds very, very dated. 1970s/1980s dated, if not earlier even.

So there you have it. It's an opinion piece which is poorly written, poorly thought out, filled with obvious bias. In no way is this representative of anyone's opinions except the author and it should probably be written to add "I PERSONALLY BELIEVE" before every statement trying to be passed as fact.

This is one "guide" I will never, ever, recommend to anyone, MUCH LESS younger people who can do without the needlessly aggressive opinions, most of which are presented without a shred of explanation behind them.

*claps wildly and enthusiastically for SSC"

SSC, that was the blunt, in-depth review I wanted to give, but was too lazy to. I decided to write a shorter, more eloquent review that ended up sacrificing most of my complete distaste for the essay and some of the more colorful sarcasm that I had thought-up when reading it.

Thanks SSC for getting us all (but mostly AA) back on-topic. :D

This is one "guide" I will never, ever, recommend to anyone, MUCH LESS younger people who can do without the needlessly aggressive opinions, most of which are presented without a shred of explanation behind them.

I think it's funny, actually. The author says its an opinion piece at the onset. He outright tells everyone his entire paper will try to "categorize" music, that it will be dirty, and that in the end it will prove futile.

I'm so amused by the attitudes of both the author and you, SSC. The polarity of your opinions against his are like night and day. And here I am, I'd say, in the middle. I don't really agree with everything stated in this essay, but there's some general truth to what young composers can expect to come across when learning about music. Fortunately, since the author never passed ANYTHING off as truth, all opinion, people are free to form their own opinions about music.

It could be worse. After all, if funding was never granted in the 1900's for atonal music to become more prolific, we wouldn't have many of the great works we have today or the freedom to have different perspectives on music. So, let's keep our eye on the ball because the pendulum swings both ways.

I think it's funny, actually. The author says its an opinion piece at the onset. He outright tells everyone his entire paper will try to "categorize" music, that it will be dirty, and that in the end it will prove futile.

Excellent point!

He DOES say:

Now, categorization is always a risky business. Stereotyping, judging and fitting the endless variety of personalities into labeled drawers is never clean or easy work and inevitably futile. Trend spotting may be useful, but the best works are those that don

I think it's funny, actually. The author says its an opinion piece at the onset. He outright tells everyone his entire paper will try to "categorize" music, that it will be dirty, and that in the end it will prove futile... Fortunately, since the author never passed ANYTHING off as truth, all opinion, people are free to form their own opinions about music.

Um... I think I already covered this...

One can put a disclaimer in front of something, but that leaves it up to interpretation what parts of the essay are opinion and which aren't. If I were to put a disclaimer in front of a work (which is a very informal practice by-the-way) that said that some of the work was opinion and in that work I said quite bluntly "no one listens to classical music anymore" (stated like a fact), would that be fact or opinion? Because essays are expected to be well-researched and cited, it is assumed that things stated as facts are indeed facts. Thus, "no one listens to classical music anymore" would be a fact because it wasn't preceded by "in my opinion," "I believe that" or anything that would hint that my statement is an opinion. It is a risky business to assume that this is covered by the disclaimer (which I would discourage the writer from employing).

When the writer said that most octogenarians listen to 18th Century music, it sounded very much like a blunt fact (as if he had pulled it from some statistics), when in actuality it is merely opinion.

And I think SSC also covered this...

...it should probably be written to add "I PERSONALLY BELIEVE" before every statement trying to be passed as fact.

Bottom line: things said like facts are expected to be facts. Things said like opinions are expected to be opinions.

And honestly, if the author acknowledges that the work is futile, why are we even bothering to read it? Furthermore, why does he even go ahead and does [sic] something which he KNOWS and even states is hopeless?

Why are you bothering to make an issue of statements that aren't even factual or intended to be? The author has obviously done everything possible to point out that the paper is nothing more than his opinion. Everyone knows this... the only people insisting that the guy is making "factual" claims are the people who disagree with his opinion.

I'm even more amused by this... you accuse the writer of creating a strawman argument, but then you start making wild claims that the things contained within the paper are being presented as "factual" when the author does nothing of the sort. The reality is that you're creating a strawman of your own, misrepresenting his opinions as factual, then turning around and complaining because the statements appear, to you, to be factual, THEN turning around and arguing the whole paper is bullshit because none of the information is actually "factual" at all.

Wow, if that doesn't make your head swim, I don't know what does. It's the same kind of laughable argumentation you use over and over again (too bad it's catching on with others, too)... I guess people just aren't allowed to have opinions based on personal experience or personal interest in the subject matter. I could probably write a much better "essay" than this, but what's the point? This pretty much "expresses" my general frustration with composition and how it's taught today.

Furthermore, if you're looking for evidence, look no further than your own subjective opinion. The whole subject matter concerning the methods of teaching composition is SUBJECTIVE, and I welcome you to find charts, graphs, and other "factual" data that would prove otherwise. Good luck doing any better than this guy did... I'm sure your "opinion" will be much more "factual" than his... considering you can't offer anything to make your OPINION more FACTUAL.

Funny, this is how you argue as well. It doesn't matter whose opinion it is, if your opinion is different, instead of respectfully stating disagreement and why, you approach the whole discussion as though your opinion is "FACT" while any other opinion is "JUST AN OPINION". Like I said, your argumentation is severely lacking when you don't respect or even allow for another point of view. You'd have much more success at it if you were more OPEN MINDED to the opinions of others (Jamie, you're right, people should be more open minded). As amusing as this has been, I think it's time to move on.

nice essay, beeri. you've got the right idea here. i wouldn't pay too much attention to the butthurt geeks that infilitrate this thread.

:)

Then some bombs get dropped:

This genre is often associated with academia. Eager as always for funding, post-World War II professors at institutions like Harvard and Princeton wrote music so convoluted and complex that only a select few claimed to enjoy it. These connoisseurs effectively labeled everyone else ignorant, as Milton Babbit did in his 1958 essay,

Hey I thought it was good. So there, you condescending folk ;)

Wow, AA. I wonder if all you do is wait for a chance to try to attack me for whatever nonsense, nevermind you apparently can't read:

It's an opinion piece which is poorly written, poorly thought out, filled with obvious bias. In no way is this representative of anyone's opinions except the author and it should probably be written to add "I PERSONALLY BELIEVE" before every statement trying to be passed as fact.

This is one "guide" I will never, ever, recommend to anyone, MUCH LESS younger people who can do without the needlessly aggressive opinions, most of which are presented without a shred of explanation behind them.

So I'm failing to acknowledge what, again? Oh seriously, get a life.

Can we put an end to this childish and pointlessly off-topic bickering. I don't care who started it, just stop throwing sand in each-others faces. SSC, give AA his firetruck back... AA, I believe SSC had the blue pail first. Go to opposite ends of the sandbox and STFU.

:)

Yah?

We should put code into the forums that makes it so everytime SSC and Antiatonality discuss or argue something, a kid in Darfur gets saved.

:P