The goal of a composition

4 hours ago, Advanced Blowhard said:

And Warhol's soup can pictures awaken in me long lost nostalgia for those long winter days spent playing in the snow of the upper quad located behind the house (read mansion) and followed by cans and cans of tomato soup  - mater soup, we called it - lovingly prepared by Aunty Emily - yes, we did call her that! - before moving on to the nappy-poo portion of yet one more day of our pathetic existence. ((wow, was THAT a trip down memory lane)). So by my standards, Warhol's cans are way superior to any other damn thing, including the Parrish-es. Now of course I understand that my standards will not, should not and cannot be taken as golden. So whose can? No ones. The only standards that .can be used by any individual to determine the relative greatness of a work of art are ONLY those that exist within themselves and this is true whether they know that or not else we would need to conclude that it is actually possible for one person to impose their own ideas, conclusions, standards on another and make them take root and be fully internalized and believed.

The "nostalgia" you describe does not come from "art' but from consumerism; you're attaching a memory to a consumer product, it's no different than one having fond memories of playing a video game with their friends back in middle school.

But it says nothing about beauty standards. I do not believe you hold a red and white soup can to be a high-aesthetic standard; you may as well decorate your entire house with Polish flags if it's that easy.

A normal person, across various cultures I might add, can listen to both Beethoven and Schoenberg and clearly tell that Beethoven is better. They can't explain why, but they just know that it is. Those who'd say they prefer Schoenberg are an outlier. Many do it to be contrarian.  

By whose standards, you ask? 

Nature's.

What's interesting is that the modernist perspective is that is that it asks us to at once accept that beauty is subjective, but "what it means" is objectively discernable and those who "don't get it" are just too dumb to understand. An entirely conflicting view void of explanation. 

Lastly, the vast majority of people who hold this view are extremely pro-democracy, yet will dismiss the masses preferring Da Vinci to Kandinsky as "appeal to majority" or "mob mentality". 

Like, the fact that you can sit a room full of ordinary people in front of the above two paintings and most of them will say the right example is pretty and left is ugly (clear-cut yes or no), but if you did the same with an abstract painting and asked the audience what they think it "means" you'd get a huge swath of different answers and a lot of "I have no idea" proves that it is beauty which is the more objective concept.

6 hours ago, AngelCityOutlaw said:

much, some quoted below and responded to.

 

 

A number of drive-bys:

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The "nostalgia" you describe does not come from "art' but from consumerism; you're attaching a memory to a consumer product, it's no different than one having fond memories of playing a video game with their friends back in middle school.

Well, more to the point I would say is that I am describing nostalgia with reference to that yummy tomato flavoring that you can get out of a good soup can as well as to remembered feelings of love and contentment from Aunty Emmy ((((((((((ok, i admit, there was no Emmy, no Upper Quad, no Mansion, I just made all of that up in my attempt to make "points")))))))))) And who is to say what part of  my nostalgia I can and cannot make use of in whatever process that I am engaged in whether it be evaluating for myself standards of beauty?

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But it says nothing about beauty standards. I do not believe you hold a red and white soup can to be a high-aesthetic standard; you may as well decorate your entire house with Polish flags if it's that easy.

You would have to better define "high-aesthetic standard". Leaving that aside for now, I might, using my own personal definition of that term, conclude that a soup can poster would be a more aesthetically pleasing thing to hang over my TV than works by Titian but that might be because the Titian constrasts oh so much more with the empty water bottles, the unemptied ashtrays, day old pizza boxes containing day old pizza, etc, etc - and thus loses the contest in this context; other contexts could have different results but taking all together, you don't have an objective status of beauty else all such comparisons as the above one would give you definite conclusions. So yeah, I haven't said much about beauty standards here but there is more below.

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A normal person, across various cultures I might add, can listen to both Beethoven and Schoenberg and clearly tell that Beethoven is better. They can't explain why, but they just know that it is. 

Yes, using their own personal standards they could conclude that, and a perfectly valid thing for them to do, to decide for themselves which they like better, decide on which IS better...IS for themselves, but not for anyone else because I can tell you right now that I consider some works of Schoenberg to be better for me than some of Beethoven (thinking here of some of the mostrosities that make up some of the movements of his middle period pieces) and some of Beethoven to be better for me than some of Schoenberg's.

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Those who'd say they prefer Schoenberg are an outlier. Many do it to be contrarian.  

Or maybe because they say it because, like me, they simply sometimes like hearing the atonal piano pieces of Schoenberg to the Beethoven piano sonata I heard this weekend, last movement, it being a cacophony of sound to rival anything ever produced by Schoenberg. Do you hold that such a thing as I have stated here is at least somewhat possible or not at all?

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Nature's.

Ah, but nature produced the Schoenberg lovers as well as the Beethovenian ones.

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What's interesting is that the modernist perspective is that is that it asks us to at once accept that beauty is subjective, but "what it means" is objectively discernable and those who "don't get it" are just too dumb to understand. An entirely conflicting view void of explanation. 

By golly, a point of agreement doth approach! Yay!!! I am not "up" so much on modernist perspectives about beauty being subjective but I disagree with them if they say that the meaning of a piece of art is objectively discernable. For one thing, many works have both no meaning while at the same time they mean everything. Of course contradictions abound here but that is ok, that can remind us of the sometimes seeming infinite number of possibilities in art.

Leaving the drive-bys behind and moving onto other points...

I am addressing here the idea that it is logical to conclude that it possible to determine if one piece of art is better than another, if one painting is better than another, whether it is more artistic or less artistic, and so on. Similarly for musical works. And if you are going to compare paintings to paintings and sonatas to sonatas then next we can compare fugues to Russian balalaika music, Russian balaliaka music to paintings by Thomas Cole and see if the fugues or balalaika or the Cole's come out ahead. But who gets to decide "who comes out ahead"? The only way I can think of to do it (I mean, given the increasingly addled state of my brain)  maybe someone else has a better one?) to do it, I say, would be to assign every person a vote and whichever candidate gets the most votes wins the award. Now, in this scheme, maybe, in order to get what some people would call a better result, i.e) one that conforms more to their way of thinking than other results, maybe we weight all the votes, those who have 5 years of experience listening would get 0.5 extra of a vote, those with 10 years, 1 extra vote, etc. Problem, maybe the person with 5 years has been a more attentive listener and thus has realized many more things about the art in question than the 10 year person and thus able to appreciate it more. So do Mr 0.5 and Ms 1.0 exchange weightings? Do we even want to consider length of listening or should we completely replace it with another standard? Hey, I know...let's vote on it! We now approach ever closer to the turtles all the way down conundrum as far as using votes to determine objective standards so maybe we should (note to self: avoid temptation to bring out the "let's vote on it" line more than once, doing so would eliminate retroactively the argumentative force of its first usage) maybe we should....maybe....hell if I know. Anyone got any great ideas?

Let's imagine a scenario where someone did actually come up with a great idea for artistic greatness and greater-than-ness determination that would actually WORK (still cant imagine what it would be but most likely an all-knowing, art loving divine being would need to be involved and carrying a BIG STICK in order to force any of its recalcitrant beings back into line if they disagreed with it. Leaving aside the question of whether or not there ARE any divine beings, I do not believe they are likely to wade into these debates any time soon. So, still stuck. Not sure what to do next but I will say this: I will be godddamned if I am going to let some Yahoo off the street to come in and tell ME that the music of Schoenberg is better than a ham sandwich with mustard (Goulden's, natch). How dast a creature such as that even suggest such a vile notion to ME! Damn Yahoos off the street, you just can't trust them, I always say. What you could do is come at those Yahoos saying "Ham sandwich with mustard, Ham sandwich with mustard" and the other crew would come back with "Schoenberg! Schoenberg!" and "Ham sandwich/mustard" "Schoe! Schoe! Schoe!" "Ham/mush, Ham/mush, Ham/mush, Ham/mush" and both groups come to their semi-functioning senses and say "WHAT IN THE EVER-LOVING FRICK ARE WE DOING ARGUING OFTEN DISSONAT TONES COMBINED WITH NICE RHYTHMIC STRUCTURES AGAINST PIG PRODUCTS?!?!?!?

Yeah, that is a difficult thing to, determine an answer to the DISS-RHYS vs pig debate. But if you think that it is difficult to do that then what would you say to a debate on which second entry of a fugue subect in all of the fugues from Book I and II is greater than all others. Similar difficulties abound that cannot be figured out so perhaps we should take a simple way out. Drop all the debates about specific levels of greatness and instead conduct in-depth conversations about the works at hand, then we might really learn something.

7 hours ago, Advanced Blowhard said:

Yes, using their own personal standards they could conclude that

When "personal standards" of beauty across millenia and cultures remain consistent, it does not suggest a high-degree of subjectivity exists regarding the subject. 

At the most basic level, a dissonant harmony of say a minor second or tone cluster will sound dissonant and a major chord will sound consonant. The laymen will be inclined to say that the latter "sounds better". The perception of consonance and dissonance is not a subjective phenomena. It is a reality of physics and the structure of the human ear.

Few will disagree with that, but for some reason will argue that this objectivity ends there...

7 hours ago, Advanced Blowhard said:

Ah, but nature produced the Schoenberg lovers as well as the Beethovenian ones.

Debatable to the extent that such is actually true given that Schoenberg and his serialism was not an organic development, but a concerted effort he made to bring "equality" into music.

As I said in my original post, the vast majority of those who have not be indoctrinated, don't seem to like serialism.

7 hours ago, Advanced Blowhard said:

those who have 5 years of experience listening would get 0.5 extra of a vote, those with 10 years, 1 extra vote, etc. Problem, maybe the person with 5 years has been a more attentive listener and thus has realized many more things about the art in question than the 10 year person and thus able to appreciate it more.

 Music and art do not require "experience" or education to appreciate. It's either good or it's not.

There is no way to suggest how a more "educated" person on art should have a better understanding of what makes a painting the masses would say is ugly ACTUALLY beautiful or good that does not involve abstract conceptualist "artspeak" unrelated to the actual work.

You will notice that art and music which has stood the test of time generally requires a mastery of the craft so far above that of the layman's ability, it seems to rival the skill of nature or God's creation itself. 

The ugly "Venus of Willendorf" is something I could've sculpted.

However, standing before something like this

I am in awe. This clearly is the work of a master and as a result, looks infinitely better than the Venus of Willendorf. Anyone who says they'd rather have the mediocre skill to sculpt it rather than the skill required to make this work is simply lying.

When one looks at these statues, it is almost impossible to believe that a mortal man was able to create such lifelike people from a block of stone and yet they have.

It's the same with music and every other creative pursuit. The best ones rival nature's aesthetics and when they do, people respond to it most positively. The architecture we used to have complemented the natural scenery in which humans lived, today it is an affront to it.

Nature sets the standard.

11 hours ago, AngelCityOutlaw said:

At the most basic level, a dissonant harmony of say a minor second or tone cluster will sound dissonant and a major chord will sound consonant. The laymen will be inclined to say that the latter "sounds better". The perception of consonance and dissonance is not a subjective phenomena. It is a reality of physics and the structure of the human ear.

 

 

Summarizing my view of current proceedings, if I may. 

You are a lover of music, painting and other arts, you believe that works from those area as can enrich our days, our lives, our very souls and in order to allow such conditions to exist that will make more valuable works possible, as opposed to those that certainly (read "perhaps", in my view) have no logical, rational or any right at all to exist. You have joined the battle and are fighting the good fight! Good show, old (AngelCityOutlaw)-chum(ette)! I truly thank you for these actions if they your actions be and I hope that you, I and all others who wish to join us will remain victorious against rampant consumerism, philistinianism and, among many (unfortunately) others, dilettanteishness. Yes, that is an actual word, I know this because I just made it up out of whole cloth. Can Webster's be far behind? Wish me luck! 

Well, as we continue these discussions over the coming days, weeks, months, years?, longer time periods? <<<scary!!!>>>, I look forward to reading more of your on-point and insightful comments and discussions; perhaps during this time even a few twigs from the tree of knowledge (yeah, right) that constitutes my increasingly addled brain/head combination will fall near your own path...but just one thing...at times during these journeys may I at least at times be allowed my beloved Schoenberg even if that means I must, for a time, temporarily push the honorable Ludwig Van* out of the way?

And I now take my leave (don't worry guys, as Ahnold forever after in MovieLand always says, "I'll be baaack!" to which  I always invariably add "but I'd rather be Beethoven!" but to be truthful, that is not really true at all), it is still early and their is a keyboard behind me (behind me and slightly off to the right) and it now MUST be played - demanding little devil, it is.

*I freely acknowledge my debt to other writers in referring to Beethoven without the "Beethoven"; it can be quite fun to go all-Clockwork-Orangey and sh*t every now and again. Capriccio?

[Regarding the quote of yours way above...well, of course music does need dissonance at times - for instance what would a toward-tonic-pushing dominant seventh chord, without the presence of our good friend, the dissonant tritone, be? Well, for one thing it would not be as toward-tonic-pushing as certainly desired and it would certainly no longer BE a dominant seventh. I know this is blatantly obvious. Instead of waffling on about it in pedantic terms, I would like to point out a few little discoveries that I made in Mahlerian harmony, stumbled upon while playing the piano accompaniment to "Wo die schönen trompeten blasen" from Des Knaben Wunderhorn:

F-C#-E-A : resolved into Bb-D-F-A.

Eb-Bb-A :  resolved after an achingly long 2.75 measure spread, upward no less, to a single B.

Gb-Db-C : not "properly" resolved to adjacent tones, a broken chord Gb major in the bass is left to suffice.

Biting, wonderfully expressive dissonance all, serving as an example of how Mahler's harmonic choices often straddled the late 19th century and the harmonic developments of the twentieth century. I am pretty sure that no music theorist has yet to name at least one of those tone combinations and I wonder if any similar ones exist in Brahms, Tchaikovsky, even Wagner or Sibelius.] 

On 2/24/2021 at 5:49 AM, AngelCityOutlaw said:

A normal person, across various cultures I might add, can listen to both Beethoven and Schoenberg and clearly tell that Beethoven is better. They can't explain why, but they just know that it is. Those who'd say they prefer Schoenberg are an outlier. Many do it to be contrarian.  

 

revisiting: what in your opinion makes Beethoven better? and as far as normal (god what a hideous concept i am joking of course), if they cannot explain why it is better then they cannot know that it IS better, to my way of semi-coherent (I think) thinking, all they really logically say is that it is better to them, in other words that they like it more.

if you cannot explain why a thing is better than other thing then there is no way to objectively conclude that it is better.

13 hours ago, Advanced Blowhard said:

revisiting: what in your opinion makes Beethoven better?

For one thing, Beethoven writes actual melodies that adhere to a hierarchy of scales, contour, rhythm, phrasing and repetition and phrasing which are easily singable. Melodies which are easy to sing hit people on a primal level; since singing is essentially an instrument almost everyone is born with.

People can tell what the fifth symphony is just by the rhythm of it. Everyone knows how it goes.

Schoenberg and his cronies' music isn't organic like that at all. It is intentionally contrived; born of an attempt to make all pitches "equal". Well, even the concept of a musical scale is defined by what it excludes (and that gives it its unique sound) and progressions are defined by stronger or weaker relationships. 

Music that actually sounds like music is better than music that doesn't.

13 hours ago, Advanced Blowhard said:

if they cannot explain why it is better then they cannot know that it IS better

My grandmother made the absolute best cabbage rolls ever. I have never found any other chef and certainly not store-bought ones that have the same flavor the ones she made had.

I don't know why they were better, how she cooked them, but they were. So I guess I need to be a master chef before I can say if something tastes better than something else?

I don't think so.

If beauty were completely subjective, no two people would love the same architecture, the same flowers, the same sunsets, or the same actress. Universal appeal would be a meaningless phrase, and beauty a meaningless term.

3 hours ago, AngelCityOutlaw said:

Schoenberg and his cronies' music isn't organic like that at all. It is intentionally contrived; born of an attempt to make all pitches "equal". Well, even the concept of a musical scale is defined by what it excludes (and that gives it its unique sound) and progressions are defined by stronger or weaker relationships. 

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If beauty were completely subjective, no two people would love the same architecture, the same flowers, the same sunsets, or the same actress. Universal appeal would be a meaningless phrase, and beauty a meaningless term.

 

 

If a million people think that this thing is better than that thing and only one person thinks otherwise then all you can say is that a million  people think that this thing is better than that thing but all that offers no proof as far as simple betterness is concerned. And that is because it is impossible to define an objective standard to define that. Having all those characteristics you mentioned is great and I agree that musical music sounds better to me than non-musical music and I also think that some of Schoenbergs's is as musical or more musical as some of Beethoven's - better to me, I have no opinion on what is better for anyone else. I agree that in the a competition between the music of these two giants, most people would come down on the  side of Beethoven, all the time. It is good and interesting to know that but it does not make Beethoven's music better except to themselves....

Schoenberg et al thought that the harmonic structure of prevailing music was worn out and not pertinent anymore and in order to find new expressive paths, they did indeed contrive in adopting tone rows of 12 distinct pitches. Ok with me due to the resulting expressive music that they produced. 

"If beauty were completely subjective..."

So beauty is not in the eye of the beholder?

Oh, and if a million people were in charge of putting things on other things, then we would have the below (he asks "are we wasting our time with all this nonsense". Are we wasting our time with all this discussing of music instead of listening to it? Of course not and I enjoy our conversations here very much and your enlightening points of view):

2 hours ago, Advanced Blowhard said:

Are we wasting our time with all this discussing of music instead of listening to it?

The real question is if we are to take this "it's subjective" viewpoint as true

Then what is the point of studying music at all? What is the point of taking guitar or piano lessons? What is the point of posting for feedback from other musicians? 

These things must be a waste of time since "improvement" is impossible if "good" is totally subjective.

A kid who just picked up the guitar for the first time is as good as Reb Beach.

A child clanking out some random notes on the piano is as skilled a composer as Mozart or Bach because even one person out there might say so.

I don't think anyone out there believes that, but it is the only logical conclusion of "subjectivity". 

On 3/8/2021 at 12:48 AM, AngelCityOutlaw said:

Then what is the point of studying music at all? What is the point of taking guitar or piano lessons? What is the point of posting for feedback from other musicians? 

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A kid who just picked up the guitar for the first time is as good as Reb Beach

 

I love fugues and I am on a fugue kick trying to write one that first and foremost satisfies myself. Now, given that other music lovers also love fugues I would be very glad to hear there opinions on mine in that I would then glean new insights into the current state of my piece. Hopefully, I would then be able to make my fugue "better" but if that occurred I would then only consider it better to myself but would make no claim for anyone else's point of view. So that is why I posted a first attempt at a fugue on YC about, I think, 10 years ago. No one commented on it. I reposted it here on the new YC site in early February. No comments. So, yeah, maybe there is not much point posting here on YC for feedback. I wanted the piece in question to be a fugue; a little vignette on that post relates a semi-ridiculous-but-perhaps-a-bit-amusing story about the journey the little feller took along its way. With me not only do you get to hear a series of notes strung together into something that might be called "music" but you also get a story, you could even use it at bedtime. I am kind of fond of that little ditty; it has been dormant since I completed it back in 2010 if I remember the date correctly. Still, if anyone wants to take a hear of it and give me some feedback, I would find that interesting.  Or maybe everyone approaches my tone-combos with trepidation in fear that they will stumble away in awe of my utter brilliance in constructing works far far better than their own. Ooops, there's that word again...given my view of that word then I of course cannot logically believe that my pieces  are better than theirs...and I do not believe that.  Do I believe I have obtained utter brilliance on my own part? I ain't telling!

As far as that kid with the guitar, I would guess that most kids in that situation might very well believe that his/her listeners think that he/she is the equal of Rob Beach but most people listening would not believe that, I imagine. They would apply their own standards of betterment in forming their opinions.

To my knowledge, Ives experimented in heavy polytonality and music that was so densely contrapuntal at times that it obscured a sense of center. So not 'tonal' in the traditional sense. But... I wouldn't call anything by Ives 'atonal.' Another problem obviously being that 'atonality' is very loosely defined and subjective. piano moving ottawa

It's about culturally ingrained semiotics really. That and information theory. If the receiver has enough understanding of the signs transmitted by the sender the communication will be better received than if said receiver doesn't. It resolves as "meaning" but doesn't exclude a couple of recipient classes ready to accept a communication in an incomprehensible language:

the groupies snared by fashion who want to appear in the scene, intellectual eunuchs, most of them;

those who are genuinely happy to listen to a deliberately "created" stream of sound that communicates nothing. 

The neurophysiology seems partially to be hard-wired. After having the term defined, most people can recognise a concord against a discord.  Culturally they've been inculcated with expectations (re music as well as other non musical events) based on cues / anticipation.

I'd say that Beethoven isn't "better" than, say, any more recent non-tonal composer. Just more comfortable for most people. Beethoven is a system they know and accords with their physiology. Beyond melody it has a rhythmic hierarchy. Beyond beats in the bar there's the harmonic rhythm also based around 2 or 4; then phrase proportions usually based around 4 and 8.

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1 hour ago, Quinn said:

those who are genuinely happy to listen to a deliberately "created" stream of sound that communicates nothing. 

that communicates "nothing" to whom? to those listeners? to yourself? to me? to everyone? 

On 3/7/2021 at 7:39 PM, AngelCityOutlaw said:

Music that actually sounds like music is better than music that doesn't.

 

That is only true for a person who prefers music that sounds like music to music that doesn't sound like music. But does anyone really fit that description? Probably not; instead they simply have a different idea about what is musical. You again seem to me to be trying to impose your view of a thing onto another individual who is obviously distinct from you, from me, from every one. Let's not stack our viewpoint things on top of other's viewpoint things. 

From that Monty Python skit referenced earlier:

(((

I should warn you this is no time for complacency.

Noo.

)))

That "noo" kills me every time. How he manages such humor with such a small inflection is beyond me.  But who knows, perhaps I am like Dudley Moore from that movie "Arthur", sometimes I just think of funny things...funny to me that is, not necessarily to anyone else.

In essence, what is being done in various parts of this thread, are attempts to either prevent me from or shame me for liking the music of Schoenberg and his compatriots.

That is obnoxious.  

I am not taking that personally because I know it is not directed at me personally. In fact, it's much worse than that because it is directed at everyone.

Not that there is anything wrong with that, of course. Blowhards can also be very obnoxious.

It's always just opinion. I write music miles away from Beethoven. I hope people derive something from listening to it. They can call it good or bad; it makes sense or it doesn't or might do. Much will depend on how acclimatised to similar music they are. Hence if serial 12-tone music appeals to you, you're no doubt more accustomed to it than people who just want music for entertainment or distraction. Popular music is popular because it's ultra-conservative, as Mozart's was, catering to the elite back in his day.

However, as I said up there, semiotics comes into it. It's about meaning - whether what's signified by signs is recognised/understood. As with most aspects of "reality", the relationship between signs and signified is partially dependent on one's culture therefore. (And it's interesting to note that as far-eastern cultures evolved an interest in popular music and harmonising their traditional songs, they turn to basic western idioms of harmony and progression).

I wouldn't be daft enough to say "that's natural therefore" except to note the possibility that some aspects of vertical tonal relationships are hard-wired into our neurophysiology. We hear a single piano note - but it's far from a pure tone. Most people are aware of timbre but not of the harmonics that make it up but they're there and, should an alien tone be introduced, the average person will know something "isn't right".  

A minor scale sounds weird because the 3rd of the tonic triad clashes with the 5th harmonic of the fundamental. Same with any minor triad.

Add conventions about progression learned from our culture and you have  expectations/anticipation. Perhaps it's even evolved in our brains now. No doubt the Evolutionary Psychiatrists would have things to say about that. If people are expecting a perfect cadence they'll feel let down if they don't get one. If the cadence turns out to be a V-VI, an interrupted, they'll expect resolution further on.  This continual unrolling of tensions and resolutions are a big part of tonal composition and since its conventions are accepted, its why Beethoven is more comfortable than the 12-tone composers. 

It doesn't mean those composers are no good. Although I think Schönberg missed an important trick the style has had over 100 years to mature as a language. Some listeners have bothered to "learn" it. Some of my music sounds serial because I construct my motifs along similar lines - no note repetition within a phrase (usually) - but I'm not a serialist. It was forced on me in college (and why I quit) but some of it evidently stuck.

The outcome: if you compose serial or serial-sounding music; or stray too far from conventions as they stand today, expect a smaller following. A composer must estimate their relationship with the public.

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On 3/9/2021 at 2:57 PM, Advanced Blowhard said:

I love fugues and I

<stuff, stuff and more stuff>

I am actually slow on my own uptake. Instead of that <stuff> mentioned above I should have said the following, which has and is my basic view of things being discussed here but I never really completely formed my concept into an immediately understandable form:

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, we must all determine for ourselves and for no one else, what it is that we consider beautiful. We can do that using many approaches: studying the artistic endeavor being undertaken, practicing those techniques which we will later use "for real" when creating our creations, discussing these creations and other artistic matters with others. By so doing, we will be better able to realize our own ideas about beauty and thus produce works that will hopefully, as a result, inspire those who pay attention to us to at least understand what it is that we call beautiful and perhaps even see it that way themselves. More beauty to then be experienced in our lives. Good show! And quite simple when you think of it.

[I do not specifically seek for others to pay attention to, appreciate, hate or love the things I create but I do hope they enjoy them and find them beautiful solely because that would then add to the sum total of all beauty that has been produced by the universe and if you ask me, we need all the beauty we can get.]

[[alright alright i admit that a little bit of full-on outright adoration directed directly at me would be "nice". Hey, I am human, after all, aren't I? I am going with "yeah, baby!!!]]

On 3/11/2021 at 8:26 AM, Quinn said:

I'm not a serialist. It was forced on me in college (and why I quit) but some of it evidently stuck.

Using the above as a jumping off point, I am interested what my fellow threaders think of things like the below. I have no connection with this piece I just found it on a website that i have recently joined which is devoted to videos of music which display the score as the work progresses. I find it very interesting to know what others think of a given work of art and why they think so. As for myself, I like this work quite a lot even though most 20th century and later music I dont often listen to.

It’s ok, it is as it is – not particularly “modern sounding” but then it uses the standard chromatic scale.

I’m not about to offer a crit except to note that Youtube mentions electronics. I have to wonder why. They don’t seem to do much: alter the timbre a bit; amplify the sounds, add a bit of sustain…

But this piece gets nowhere so I turned it off at the 5 minute mark. There is so much music out there, call it avant garde, modern, post-modern as you will, that does capture the attention – and with this kind of music that’s because noticeably new things happen.  They’re absent in those 5 minutes. Thematic development is possible with modern music but its relevance here is debatable. As background music it could go on indefinitely – and you know what? I reckon this would be better in a live performance with someone manipulating the electronics. The bodily gestures would add something big. Orchestras are impersonal but in ensembles, particularly small ones, the gestures of each player add to the whole. Audiences don't just listen, they watch. In his day, Stockhausen was master on the electronics during performances: Mantra; Kontakte and the like.

So I listened without prejudice but got bored. Compared with something like Lutyen’s Quincunx - or Hosokawa’s Landscape V for Sho and String Orchestra - many pieces - that captured me until beyond the last note, this work seems sterile.

The question is: as a work in progress: is it on its way to reaching a goal of its composer? Question 2: does that matter?

And you spoke of finding it on a forum. Was that the London Composers Forum perchance?

It's interesting that I just found (and commented on) a piece in the Electronics section of this forum. It uses microtones and is one possible arrangement of score for clarinets. It brings up some points about the inadequacy of standard musical notation for work of this kind.

Having grown up with the equal temperament scale (which has microtonal errors against a natural scale) it took a brief adaptation. But my past includes work with the Project 80 analogue synthesisers (TRULY modular in which you could set the keyboard span to produce whatever intervals you liked, gliss between notes etc). So I'm not entirely new to unorthodox tunings! Give me an 8 or 16 track tape and a Moog and I'm on it.  

On 2/24/2021 at 7:17 PM, AngelCityOutlaw said:

When "personal standards" of beauty across millenia and cultures remain consistent, it does not suggest a high-degree of subjectivity exists regarding the subject. 

A six-four chord with the fifth being the lowest note was once considered a dissonance but do many now hear it as being so? If not then we can at least say, without bringing beauty into it, that the perceptions of such a tone combination as that has not remained consistent over the millenia nor even over the last 300 years or so. 'Twasn't beautiful once, but now it can be. Seems quite subjective to me.

A six-four has always been an appoggiatura to me if it leads on to a 5/3 or something similar, a 7/5 for instance.

The issue here is how much of the reception, whether you call it beauty or not, is neurophysiological? How much is wired in to recognise and analyse based on the harmonic series?