A Pet Peeve Of Mine

Maybe I'm crazy. Go ahead, call me crazy. I don't care.

Since Ligeti died, we've all been very good about getting on our soap-boxes and either waxing poetic on the man's music or shitting all over it. That's fine. I actually enjoy the arguments that come up between these two camps. It forces me to think about what the hell it is I'm doing with these dots on the page.

What I don't get, is how someone who is a COMPOSER can listen to something and DISMISS it without a second thought. I mean, I

don't like a lot of music. In fact, you could say I hate a lot of music. But that music I hate, I can still step back

and find some kind of value in it. I don't like Xennakis's music that much but I've stolen lots of his orchestration ideas(Mainly from his piano quintet, "akea"). It just really makes me queasy when those of us(That's right you, me, and that ol' fossil Bach we have propped up in the corner) who have chosen to dedicate our lives to this art

can not come up with anything to say about a piece of music we find esthetically displeasing other than "it sucks" or "crap".

I mean, come on.... You're supposed to be a COMPOSER. I expect that kind of talk from people who have music on a much lower pedestal but YOU.... YOU ARE A LIFE MAN!

I know we are all in the midst of a longer than life process but I would suggest that when you next hear a piece of music and your "shite-bell" starts sounding a warning, maybe try

asking yourself WHY?

WHY is this music crap and this music isn't?

WHY does BACH rock and SCHOENBERG suck cock?

If you start shutting doors on yourself as a composer you only hurt yourself.

I agree for the most part. A good composer should be able to take value from any work of music. We have a lot of composers here complain that the academic word doesn't value their works. Well, you don't value their works. It goes both ways. You, as composers, should be able to see the value and ideas in someone's work and draw from it to help your style. Regradless if you hate the music or not. There is usually something that is unique and worth wide in the music.

I'm probably one of the few people on this forum that yawn at nico's work. Yet he comes to me for advice. I'm not sure why but I think it has to do with that I offer him something different. That is why I think he is a talented composer. He is willing to learn from others, even if he is a prick in doing so.

We have others here who refuse to go beyond the tradition style of music and ways of doing so. It is fine and I admire those who can do that because their work is brilliant. Docs and Lee are just two examples. However, we have those who try to write in the classical idiom but merely depend on the rules to write their music. And yet again we have the people who use the rules are guidelines and attempt to sound classical but fail. But anyway, I guess overall, a composer should appericate a composer like Legiti, even if they deplore this music. He is famous for a reason, even if you don't think he is, there are a lot of people who do. Try to find why he is instead of saying the other people are just deaf.

I definitely try not to dismiss composers without knowing what they've done. However, I do know which composers I'd like to emulate in my own style, and which I'd rather stay away from, even though I respect them.

As far as Ligeti goes, I haven't asserted anything about his genius or lack thereof, since I haven't heard a single piece of his. All I've done is respond to overly enthusiastic comments made by others - in particular, an assertion that Ligeti was a genius greater than any in the past 80 years. I found that ludicrous, for the reasons you state here.

Bitterduck, I too seek critique from those I believe don't like my musical style. They have a way of providing a degree of objectivity that a starry-eyed fan, even a musically-educated fan, wouldn't be able to reach. There are a number of composers on here who are quite developed technically and show great skill, yet I don't like the music they produce (I won't name names though); and there are those here whose music I enjoy thoroughly. Lee is one of the latter, as is Nick. Can't say I've heard enough of Nico's music to form an opinion, something I plan to rectify.

WHY does BACH rock and SCHOENBERG suck cock?

I know plenty of people who think the other way round...

But getting back on topic, I'm always ready to acknowledge talent and genius. Good music is good music. Whether I actually like the music or not is an entirely different matter.

I suspect either that musicians like this are in the minority or it's a figment of the wan'-it-now age though it seems natural to avoid music jarring to the ears. (There might well be some natural, attavistic reason why some sounds affect us differently from others.)

I'm as bad with movies - if I don't like it, I turn it off or walk out of the cinema, and don't bother with too much soul searching. Art too.

I've explored much music. It doesn't have to be academically excellent or critically-acclaimed to grab me. What's important is keeping the door open. I might dislike it now but could think differently tomorrow.

Hold on a second....

...I think this thread is currently under the impression that all new music is jarring.

Anyone heard of Glen Buhr?

Funny... nobody likes Canadian contemporary music.... oh well....

Canadian Contemporary Music...

Haha, that's funny. Come on, be serious now.

Heh.

And Schoenberg is great.

And Schoenberg is great.

Well, he must be, considering that he's even remembered.

I'm not too sure why, though.

Well, he must be, considering that he's even remembered.

I'm not too sure why, though.

Because he wrote some beautiful music, eg Verklaerte Nacht. And he did try to do something about the perceived crisis that seems to threaten all the arts at the time. It worked. After 30 years of larking around we could all start again. Neo- plus whatever pre-20th century style you like.

;)

Schoenberg:

listen to his stuff before he went atonal. It's great.

Then listen to the stuff after he went atonal. The stuff that made his earlier work great is still there. It's actually more evident because it's been liberated from the confines of dissonance/consonance.

Everyone in this forum go do yourselves a favor: Get a recording of Pierot Lunaire, with text translation. This is amazing stuff. The melodic development is brilliant. The way that the music syntesizes the text is great. His use of instrumental and vocal color is very solid. Also form. This is very organized music. Pierot contains fugues!!!

Now this stuff is not easy to listen to, you actually have to think about it. If you want music to just "tickle" the ear, go listen to Britney Spears. If you can learn to enjoy Schoenberg, you will enjoy Mozart and Bach even more.

A lot of the time when people judge music that they can't understand as crap, it just shows their own limitations.

Anything can be music, even random noise from everyday. "Real" music is within our conceptual understanding. How we link together our prior experiences. So I suggest that people start saying: I don't get into X's music, or I can't understand "X" type music, or I prefer "Y" music to "X" music. But don't be so hasty to pass judgement on what you don't understand.

(Off the soap box)

(back on the soap box)

By the way another analogy:

Kids on the whole like candy and dislike strong flavors like brussel sprouts or whatever. As kids mature, their pallates develop and they learn to appreciate new flavors. Just because as an adult you may like asparagus, doesn't mean you want to eat exclusively, but as an adult you can enjoy asparagus and chocolate. I actually think that adults appreciate chocolate more when they know more about other flavors. So open your minds and listen.

(off the soap box again)

No wonder all the other kids thought I was weird. I always have hated chocolate and I just found my first grade journal, which states,

"my favrit foods ar spinich and brokkily. i olso lik gerbils."

Though I suspect I didn't mean to connect those two sentences.

I also used to spend hours dancing in the basement to Tchaikovsky and Chuck Mangione, so you can't expect to get a normal child out of that.

edit: That was so out there. I should also mention that I adore Schoenberg.

Maybe I'm crazy. Go ahead, call me crazy. I don't care.

Since Ligeti died, we've all been very good about getting on our soap-boxes and either waxing poetic on the man's music or shitting all over it. That's fine. I actually enjoy the arguments that come up between these two camps. It forces me to think about what the hell it is I'm doing with these dots on the page.

What I don't get, is how someone who is a COMPOSER can listen to something and DISMISS it without a second thought. I mean, I

don't like a lot of music. In fact, you could say I hate a lot of music. But that music I hate, I can still step back

and find some kind of value in it. I don't like Xennakis's music that much but I've stolen lots of his orchestration ideas(Mainly from his piano quintet, "akea"). It just really makes me queasy when those of us(That's right you, me, and that ol' fossil Bach we have propped up in the corner) who have chosen to dedicate our lives to this art

can not come up with anything to say about a piece of music we find esthetically displeasing other than "it sucks" or "crap".

I mean, come on.... You're supposed to be a COMPOSER. I expect that kind of talk from people who have music on a much lower pedestal but YOU.... YOU ARE A LIFE MAN!

I know we are all in the midst of a longer than life process but I would suggest that when you next hear a piece of music and your "shite-bell" starts sounding a warning, maybe try

asking yourself WHY?

WHY is this music crap and this music isn't?

WHY does BACH rock and SCHOENBERG suck cock?

If you start shutting doors on yourself as a composer you only hurt yourself.

It's just hard for some of us - especially the more intuitively bent composers without much formal training - to express some musical aspects clearly with words. For that reason, I haven't really done a lot of critiques in a while, since they would end up very lacking and that makes me sad :wub:.

that's also my problem. Otherwise I'd be posting critiques everywhere. I would never let topics go un-critiqued (for lack of a better word). but I don't have so much musical knowledge as half the people here. So usually I'd just post a little thing like I like this, great job, which I doubt I should do but ah well.

Everyone in this forum go do yourselves a favor: Get a recording of Pierot Lunaire, with text translation. This is amazing stuff. The melodic development is brilliant. The way that the music syntesizes the text is great. His use of instrumental and vocal color is very solid. Also form. This is very organized music. Pierot contains fugues!!!

Now this stuff is not easy to listen to, you actually have to think about it. If you want music to just "tickle" the ear, go listen to Britney Spears. If you can learn to enjoy Schoenberg, you will enjoy Mozart and Bach even more.[/b]

Hmm, I can think of something better for her to tickle than my ear...well, that's a start....except I don't like Spitney Brears. ;) :D

A lot of the time when people judge music that they can't understand as crap, it just shows their own limitations.[/b]

But how much work is one supposed to do to "be informed" by music? I'd have said that a different way - it shows the limits of how far one is prepared to work to be entertained. I do get the feel that I'm being urged to catharsis here! There are those who will do a lot of work, just as others take cold showers in the middle of winter. There are those for whom 'work' is a somewhat unsavoury term!

But how much work is one supposed to do to "be informed" by music? I'd have said that a different way - it shows the limits of how far one is prepared to work to be entertained. I do get the feel that I'm being urged to catharsis here! There are those who will do a lot of work, just as others take cold showers in the middle of winter. There are those for whom 'work' is a somewhat unsavoury term!

Ah! I agree with you completely. All this talk about "working" for your listening is such a drag. By any chance,

do you remember the piece you heard that got you into classical music? Or maybe I should say, do you

remember the piece that you heard when you got into "written down composed music of the european tradition"? I bet you can. I've noticed that for most people when they get into this music, they don't do it becasue it's cool or because they're trying to impress somebody. They do it because they just LOVE it. This love comes from an addiction to an experience they had with a piece of music at a particularly vulnerable moment. I still remember mine:

Beethoven 9. After I heard that thing from front to end I just KNEW I was hooked.

So, don't WORK for your listening, but keep your ears open. Eventually the stepping stone to a new sound world will be put into place and you will have the opportunity to take it if the conditions are right. If not, then just keep listening. Listening should be an enjoyable experience. Not a chore.

I think a better way to put it might be: "the more intellectual effort you put in when listening to music, the more you'll get out of it." I find that when I'm really concentrating on a piece I'm listening to, noticing so much of what the composer did, I not only improve my craft, I also enjoy the piece more! Listening to Stravinsky's Firebird as background is nice, but when I concentrate, I start to get excited about what I hear - "wow, what a complicated string section," or "that's a very beautiful french horn melody, what makes it so lovely?"

I think a better way to put it might be: "the more intellectual effort you put in when listening to music, the more you'll get out of it." I find that when I'm really concentrating on a piece I'm listening to, noticing so much of what the composer did, I not only improve my craft, I also enjoy the piece more! Listening to Stravinsky's Firebird as background is nice, but when I concentrate, I start to get excited about what I hear - "wow, what a complicated string section," or "that's a very beautiful french horn melody, what makes it so lovely?"

YES!!!!

Exactly. I get the impression that a lot of people I know, don't really LISTEN when they "listen" to music. I think that for most, listening to music is something that can be in your periphary. I don't even like using the phrase "intellectual effort" when describing a heightened sense of listening as that implies that being educated is the only way to achieve it.

I simply think that if you devote some time to sit back and listen to Beethoven 9 with your speakers at 11 you will find new appreciation for it. Apply this to any piece of music and I think you have a winner.

My teacher puts it like this "People hear music every day and enjoy it but how many bother to listen?"

*sniffle*

That was so beautiful, all of you.

no really.

I can't understand how someone can listen to a piece of music on a low volume and then assess it (this is coming from having spent a lot of time around some radio music reviewers who chunk music after listening to it for 3 seconds at low volume). I don't mean that as a judgement, just my personal feeling. I can't connect with the piece unless I wear headphones, press them up to my ears, turn up the volume and become completely immersed in a piece. If I hear something that intrigues me even the slightest bit, I'll listen to the thing endlessly, becoming intrigued by anything I find to be smart or inspired or deliciously complex.

I like listening to new music, especially here, because I can ask questions to the composer directly. It's especially fun when I think the piece is especially rad.

Oh gently caress now she's got me going on critics...

...let me tell you my little horror story....

Once upon a time, I saw a performance of Stravinsky's "Petrouchka" played by the Vancouver Symphony under the baton of Bramwell Tovey. Also on the program were two newer works by John Adams and a composer whose name I can't recall because it was in Japenese. The John Adams work was a concerto for six string electric violin based on his experiences living on the West Coast. The other work's name in english roughly translates as "Dawn Light".

The performance of Petrouchka was fine. Great even. I mean, the venue(The Orpheum) was kinda 'ehhhhhh' but I'm used to it by now.

I have to honestly say that the other two pieces were astounding. So gorgeous. I was moved literally to tears.

Dawn Light was an amazing depiction of a sunrise. Very original orchestration. Apparently it had won some

composition competition in Japan a few years ago. A really clever use of string divisi that I immediately noted and used later(Actually in my film competition entry), and GREAT pacing. The piece really had a

sense of riding it's own momentum which I find is sadly lacking in a lot of new music I hear.

The John Adams piece was very much an impressionist take on a particular improvisitory style of violin played by a jazz violinst Adams met while on the west coast. It wasn't "jazzy" though. It was way closer to Ravel. Say in the style of, Valley of the Bells. My only beef with this piece, and it's a biggie, is that Mark Fewer(The soloist) made a huge error in judgement(In my opinion). He didn't have the concerto memorized so he read from a stand he had set up on stage.

This wouldn't be that bad... except.....HE WAS TURNING HIS OWN loving PAGES!!!!

That is to say, every time there was a page turn in the middle of a flurry of notes he would stop playing and pickup a bar or two later after the page turn. It was so dramatic that I actually thought for a minute that this was the way the piece was written. No.... I went back to the concert on the second night, watched the first two again and left before Petroucka started. It couldn't have been written like that, it would have been awful for poor Mr. Adams to watch had he been there. At the climax of the piece where he was sawing away with

the orchestra he actually had to stop, turn a page, and come back in a few bars later.

ANYWAYS..... BACK TO THE FREAKIN' POINT.....

I read a review in the Vancouver Sun the next day... pheewwwwwww.... I kid you not, it was mostly a history lesson on Petrouchka which, while it may be interesting, tells us nothing about whether or not music went on in the Orpheum that night or a bunch of lumberjacks played rugby against a team of wolverines.

The last paragraph MENTIONED the two newer works but didn't give any word on the performance or even a general idea on what the pieces were about. I mean, I know that these works are new, and that tracking down the composer to talk to him about them is often unrealistic but we're talking about journalistic duty. Ask a news reporter how seriously he takes his job. These people can end up risking their lives for a story. Is it to much to expect a critic to do some basic research?!! I mean, just basic observation told me so much more than what was in the review.

The worst part was that the critic didn't even mention the fuckup with the Adams piece. I coudn't believe it. Surely something so dramatic deserves a passing mention. I mean, that's what critics do isn't it?

...discuss.

Are you sure he even attended the concert?

A Times music critic got caught out because he reported a piece unknowing that the program had been changed. And I've known of critics who piss-off at the interval and still critique the works they never heard.

To me, critics are a cancer, they feed off those who do the work and whose careers can be dashed if the cancer happens to be in a bad mood of a night.

Don't get me wound up on critics, please!

:)

M

If you can't do it, teach it. If you can't teach it write about it. If you can't do that, become a critic. Bloody cultural eunuchs, the lot of em.

Well... let's not go nuts. I'm sure there are people out there who can give just, honest, and constructive criticism. I've actually been thinking that I could help out the local music scene a little by broadcasting

critiques of new music concerts in vancouver on the university radio.

Well... let's not go nuts. I'm sure there are people out there who can give just, honest, and constructive criticism. I've actually been thinking that I could help out the local music scene a little by broadcasting

critiques of new music concerts in vancouver on the university radio.

I don't think that's what a journalistic critic is about. The ones who give honest constructive criticism are usually called teachers!

But your proposal is certainly a nice idea.