What Is The Latest Musical Complex?

If music is to be considered progressive as it should be from less advanced to very complex, i offer the question to somebody on this forum & website as to what is the latest experimental musical theory today so that i may play around with it being up-to-date on the latest musical college or concervatory theoretics both in solo & orchestrated works. I may have touched on the answer to this question without being aware of it in some of my personal compositions in which i always consider innovation a top priority so that a kompozer may be dealing with the latest musical development on the planet & maybe even beyond say a comparison with a hypothetical yet presently unreachable advanced alien race. Say the latest most complex harmony being utilized like octonic chords so on & so forth. I am assuming that an octonic chord is a block composed of 8 tones. I think the answer to this question would reveal the latest musical challenge as some sort of music puzzle or brain-teaser that is very difficult to answer proposed to the brightest musical minds having extensive background from pythagoras & the pythagorians to complex contemporary musical theoretics & acquired musical laws along the way written & incorporated for the latest musical applications in entertainment. I really need an answer to this question like in the intro to this site offers the service of answering such questions by professionals, students, & amateurs. :nod:

I am not so sure. Interesting question.

I think todays contemporary music is somewhat ecclectic. You pick elements you like and the way the composer blends that together can make him unique.

On a more personal note, you mght be tempted to go to the New Complexity camp, but since you speak rather incomprehensible, i study your music first to get an idea what the textual description ( that should have elaborated the work instead of my other way around ;) ). But if you wrote new complexity works, the music too would become incomprehensible to me

It's the 21st century.

Everyone is doing their own thing.

Do YOUR own thing.

Enough said. Do what you think you should be doing.

I am not so sure. Interesting question.

I think todays contemporary music is somewhat ecclectic. You pick elements you like and the way the composer blends that together can make him unique.

On a more personal note, you mght be tempted to go to the New Complexity camp, but since you speak rather incomprehensible, i study your music first to get an idea what the textual description ( that should have elaborated the work instead of my other way around ;) ). But if you wrote new complexity works, the music too would become incomprehensible to me

Thank you, i read about the "New Complexity" on Wikipedia & i agree Xenakis definitely falls in the genre. The above link ( Ligeti ) is my idea of very advanced music but more importantly it works amazingly well enough to be easily swallowed & this substance along with the complexity factor gives it ultimate merit & what i was seeking is all music arranged in a sort-of pyramidal hierarchy from simple to complex which i think exists though not illustrated by a would-be awakened mind not to mention all the thoroughly diagrammatic intricate findings that stipulate that music is always progressive regardless of style in any time frame in human history.

I don't agree that music should be only complex but an evolved disciplined art form which pierces into the future with the same substantial caliber as Mozart or Bach or any prolific. I think my argument was fueled by a book about the great composers which says for instance: " In the 17th century composers perfect the art of counterpoint." or something like " In the 20th century composers experiment with aleotoric music." And these findings sort-of give one the idea that these musical discoveries were progressive & not merely stylistic. Say, a "Nonetonic Chord" that not only works, but contains a particular ultimate effectiveness in it's difficult to achieve application. :eyebrow:

On a more personal note, you mght be tempted to go to the New Complexity camp, but since you speak rather incomprehensible, i study your music first to get an idea what the textual description ( that should have elaborated the work instead of my other way around ;) ). But if you wrote new complexity works, the music too would become incomprehensible to me

qft

Should we take bets on how long this thread lasts before it gets shut down?

Should we take bets on how long this thread lasts before it gets shut down?

seriously? I'd rather not.

I think, when rephrased, Marzique just asks what is currently happening in contemporary music. I would want to know that as well.

I think, when rephrased, Marzique just asks what is currently happening in contemporary music. I would want to know that as well.

My simplest answer: EVERYTHING is happening in contemporary music. We won't be looking back at this period and brand it as the "Baroque", "Classical", "Romantic", "Neoclassical", "Atonal", "Serial", "Aleatoric" or "Hexachordal" Age. It's all of the above at once. If you're being true to yourself when composing, it doesn't really matter that much what style(s) do you choose.

My simplest answer: EVERYTHING is happening in contemporary music. We won't be looking back at this period and brand it as the "Baroque", "Classical", "Romantic", "Neoclassical", "Atonal", "Serial", "Aleatoric" or "Hexachordal" Age. It's all of the above at once. If you're being true to yourself when composing, it doesn't really matter that much what style(s) do you choose.

True to yourself does also mean true to your time. That implies: no style-copies. So it is not "Baroque", "Classical", "Romantic", "Neoclassical", "Atonal", "Serial", "Aleatoric" or "Hexachordal" Age all at once, because that would be all kinds of copies. One who would write atonal music as in Schoenbergs days in by no means original and would not be called contemporary music, altough it is written today. Same applies obviously for the Baroque until Romantic era but you poor guys are being bashed too often, so I took Schoenberg as an example. But the principle remains, and the (the unanswered) question still stands: What is contempory?

True to yourself does also mean true to your time. That implies: no style-copies.

Interesting point, though I still believe that originality is an overrated concept, since nothing is really original in itself, but rather a derivation or a "new" take on a pre-existing idea.

I could take this statement at its face value if "our time" had already a pre-estabilished "framework" vogue or prerrequisite stylistical threshold to measure its "contemporariness". But the greatest single trend of "our time" is to question its own true identity, so I'd rather not wait until this general identity crisis is resolved to try and find a style I'm personally satisfied with :cool: .

Interesting point, though I still believe that originality is an overrated concept, since nothing is really original in itself, but rather a derivation or a "new" take on a pre-existing idea.

I could take this statement at its face value if "our time" had already a pre-estabilished "framework" vogue or prerrequisite stylistical threshold to measure its "contemporariness". But the greatest single trend of "our time" is to question its own true identity, so I'd rather not wait until this general identity crisis is resolved to try and find a style I'm personally satisfied with :cool: .

In philosophical terms I agree with your critique on the word originality. But let's leave that behind, because I think you know what is meant. I am sorta fine with searching your own style. But a blend or German and Italian baroque would be still baroque, and not really unique/personal/original. I would probably no notice it when someone wrote a blend of Mendelsohn and Schubert.

A blend of Russian 20th cent harmonies and Haydn would be unoriginal as well: Prokofieff has done that already. So the eclectism I am looking for sort of has to be a new blend of things that I haven't heard being blended before.

But be that as it may. There are still new things (back on topic). Like the new complexity I mentioned before, maybe spectral music should be mentioned here as well. And more...

I'm never sure what my thoughts on originality are. I dislike the modern idiom quite a bit (or a big chunk of it. there's a lot in ligeti etc that I like, but.) because I think it assumes that written and heard music are experienced in the same way, and descends into lame gimmickry as a result. Once music gets mathematical in the 12-tone sense, aural meaning gets lost. Our ears cannot extract from what is heard the tone row, or its inversions, or its numerous chordal transformations. Music that is mathematical on the page is noise to the ear. I have a test which I use when I'm listening to something moderately "modern" -- that is, does my *listening* to the music make me appreciate it more than if I just saw the incredibly clever/original/quirky/avant-garde score? Very often the music just sounds lame.

What *can* our ears plausibly extract, then? Tonality is an especially useful tool (though it is certainly not the only one) because it builds upon the natural biological capacities of the ear. We can obviously distinguish between different scales (note that the "western" scale is built up naturally from a succession of overtones) and different major/minor triads, etc. We can also tell modulations or certain harmonic effects (dissonance, consonance) apart. A more sensitive ear may catch certain harmonic intervals or leitmotifs, etc.

What is the unique value of "uniqueness"? Why does the statement "this music is unlike past music" goad me in any way to be inclined to like that music more? Good music is nice notes put in nice orders. I could not care less whether they are put in Bach-like orders, Mozart-like orders, or wholly new orders. Maybe a value of newness is the surprise and the intellectual pleasure that we gain from experiencing a new idiom. Is the value of that emotional response more important in some meaningful sense from just having well-organised, sensitive music on a page? I don't see why.

So if I write a Mozart symphony, it's still brilliant music. If I write a Bach fugue, it's still great. The notes are in nice orders. The danger in some fetishization of originality is that we forget that music is not, essentially, clever gimmickry, or intellectual self-pleasuring. It's about trying to elicit emotional responses -- one of which is a sense of intellectual satisfaction. We ought not delude ourselves into thinking that this is the only meaningful emotional response music can elicit.

Many composers who try very hard to be original forget that originality is very, very, often more fun and exciting for the composer than the listener. I will make a major caveat here: that the ear can adapt to new sounds. See Stravinsky, Prokofiev, etc. But I do claim that there are inherent limits to this. So some people consider 12-tone stuff deeply moving, but I do claim that they would find any random piece of nonsense equally moving, because they would learn to like the randomness of the sounds they were hearing. It is not the *organization* of notes, no matter how intellectually pleasing, that creates the emotional response. It is the listener doing for the composer what the composer ought to have done.

I object strongly to the claim that "True to yourself does also mean true to your time. That implies: no style-copies." 1. Why can I not conceive myself as a person of a different time? 2. Well, what is the music of our time like? The vast majority of the music being listened to is tonal. Most of it is vocal. Most of it incorporates electronic stuff, and most of it uses very straightforward harmony. So I'm afraid that while Jrcramer writes very interesting music that I often like very much, he is not writing music of our time at all. A modern casual listener would not get much out of it. I'm sure people prefer, say, Coldplay's stuff to my musical scribblings. The truth us that *none* of us should pretend to be writing "music of our time". What we are doing, and what is no less praiseworthy, is writing music that we like, for all sorts of subjective reasons, and hoping that in a community of people like this one other peiple will appreciate our efforts. Austenite is right on this point, and we ought to be at least a little less pretentious about what we're actually doing. I dislike fluffy "true to yourself" nonsense, but I find it a better standard than being "modern" or "original", at least.

Great literary writers do not write gibberish, objecting to the fact that their language is the language of the past. James Joyce came very close, but even then his language was rooted in an infinitude of reference to the past. What they do is take words, sentences, phrases, plot structures, and do things with them that are interesting. I do not see why we ought in music to aspire toward some undefinable and naive ideal of being true to some arbitrary value of originality. If we discovered a manuscript by Beethoven and declared it a masterpiece, and then realised that it was a forgery by some 21st century hack, the notes on the page remain exactly the same. Why, suddenly and inexplicably, does that music then become bad?

So, in what is at best an oblique answer to Marzique's question, (I do not believe from past observation that you desire any serious discussion, but I'm giving you the benefit of the doubt here, since Jrcramer is clearly keen of having a real discussion about the merits of a modern idiom) I'll say: why do you even care to be "modern"? I fear that many of the most original composers were not trying particularly hard to be modern. Scriabin wrote what he thought sounded interesting to him. Prokofiev's very first pieces featured his natural affinity for asymmetry, tritones, percussive use of the piano, etc.

Just write stuff, listen to stuff, and hopefully the notes will take you places. Or maybe they won't, but we ought not care. Cry me a river.

All these are good arguments & i do not counter-argue with them, i got by answer. I now merely wish to post another question i am not sure about which was fueled by all these arguments. Can we create new art forms anymore or can we only create sub-art forms classified within the art forms already in existence? I believe i have discovered or more like merely created new art forms. Now all things considered one i call " Borion" which can be classified i guess but i could be wrong under Avant-Garde. The formula for Borion is this: Utilize visual &/or semi-visual symmetries in the visual spectrum of the white & black keyboard keys with any rhythmic pattern of your choice, say the right hand playing F,F-sharp,A-flat, & B-flat while the Left hand is playing F-sharp,A-flat,B-flat, & B. Now go to the keyboard & play these perhaps it's better to simplify it at first by arpegiation 1st left hand then right hand. Look at the keyboard playing this & you will discover a visual symmetrical logic. After that the notes further are any of your choiced inventiveness say L.H.:C,C-sharp,E-flat & R.H.: F,F-sharp,A-flat, & so on & so forth all toward the goal of visual geometry of the repeating 12-tone spectrum. I wish to post a borion on this site which is intended for performance so that i may prove my point but i got too much like 3 or 4 already in the solo section which i will post later as the others go out of sight. For the mean time i think my explanation can be sufficiently explored on the piano keyboard itself as exercises of molded into polished works. In conclusion, am i right that this borion is a new art form or a subdivisiary of Avant-Garde? :facepalm:

I'm never sure what my thoughts on originality are. I dislike the modern idiom quite a bit (or a big chunk of it. there's a lot in ligeti etc that I like, but.) because I think it assumes that written and heard music are experienced in the same way, and descends into lame gimmickry as a result. Once music gets mathematical in the 12-tone sense, aural meaning gets lost. Our ears cannot extract from what is heard the tone row, or its inversions, or its numerous chordal transformations. Music that is mathematical on the page is noise to the ear. I have a test which I use when I'm listening to something moderately "modern" -- that is, does my *listening* to the music make me appreciate it more than if I just saw the incredibly clever/original/quirky/avant-garde score? Very often the music just sounds lame.

What *can* our ears plausibly extract, then? Tonality is an especially useful tool (though it is certainly not the only one) because it builds upon the natural biological capacities of the ear. We can obviously distinguish between different scales (note that the "western" scale is built up naturally from a succession of overtones) and different major/minor triads, etc. We can also tell modulations or certain harmonic effects (dissonance, consonance) apart. A more sensitive ear may catch certain harmonic intervals or leitmotifs, etc.

I disagree. I, too, dislike most of the modern idiom, but just as one can recognize leitmotives and harmonies, one can recognise certain sonorities that return. And while music like Webern or Boulez my sound to mathematical (then it shouldn't be listened to those standards) it is not right to dismiss all serial music. Berg and Dallapicolla are highly expessive, and I find these composers relativly accessable if you want to search for leitmotives/harmonies, themse, and loads of 'romantic' expression.

What is the unique value of "uniqueness"? Why does the statement "this music is unlike past music" goad me in any way to be inclined to like that music more? Good music is nice notes put in nice orders. I could not care less whether they are put in Bach-like orders, Mozart-like orders, or wholly new orders. Maybe a value of newness is the surprise and the intellectual pleasure that we gain from experiencing a new idiom. Is the value of that emotional response more important in some meaningful sense from just having well-organised, sensitive music on a page? I don't see why.

So if I write a Mozart symphony, it's still brilliant music. If I write a Bach fugue, it's still great. The notes are in nice orders. The danger in some fetishization of originality is that we forget that music is not, essentially, clever gimmickry, or intellectual self-pleasuring. It's about trying to elicit emotional responses -- one of which is a sense of intellectual satisfaction. We ought not delude ourselves into thinking that this is the only meaningful emotional response music can elicit.

This is a rather romantic definition of what music should do: evoque emotional response. And while it is an element, which is important, it is not the only. Is music is only an extention what people feel (and then preferably only the nice feelings) I would abandon it. I like music that is pretty, and I like music that is heartwrenching. I like music that is thoughtprovoking or made me think. Art has to be more than the mere romantic ideal of expressing emotion.

Many composers who try very hard to be original forget that originality is very, very, often more fun and exciting for the composer than the listener. I will make a major caveat here: that the ear can adapt to new sounds. See Stravinsky, Prokofiev, etc. But I do claim that there are inherent limits to this. So some people consider 12-tone stuff deeply moving, but I do claim that they would find any random piece of nonsense equally moving, because they would learn to like the randomness of the sounds they were hearing. It is not the *organization* of notes, no matter how intellectually pleasing, that creates the emotional response. It is the listener doing for the composer what the composer ought to have done.

I agree that originality shouldn't be made the one and only issue. But in this paragraph you demonsrtate, that, just as you *learned* to dicern motives/harmonies/form in music, people can learn and apreciate new things as well. It is the condition of western music. Let a native austraulian listen to a Bach trio sonata and he does not know what it is, maybe an out of tune Didgeridoo. I even doubt if he can tell it has three voices that often appear in an imitative texture.

Music is learned, new music can be learned as well. This is not a caveat, but is called education.

I might sound snobish now, which I think I am not. I do not want to be elitist. But I am strongly against the idea the taste is not allowed to evolve and people have to stick in the era they happen to like...

I object strongly to the claim that "True to yourself does also mean true to your time. That implies: no style-copies." 1. Why can I not conceive myself as a person of a different time? 2. Well, what is the music of our time like? The vast majority of the music being listened to is tonal. Most of it is vocal. Most of it incorporates electronic stuff, and most of it uses very straightforward harmony. So I'm afraid that while Jrcramer writes very interesting music that I often like very much, he is not writing music of our time at all. A modern casual listener would not get much out of it. I'm sure people prefer, say, Coldplay's stuff to my musical scribblings. The truth us that *none* of us should pretend to be writing "music of our time". What we are doing, and what is no less praiseworthy, is writing music that we like, for all sorts of subjective reasons, and hoping that in a community of people like this one other peiple will appreciate our efforts. Austenite is right on this point, and we ought to be at least a little less pretentious about what we're actually doing. I dislike fluffy "true to yourself" nonsense, but I find it a better standard than being "modern" or "original", at least.

glad you like it :) although I do not think the idiom I write is very conteporary (it might be oldfashioned), I strive to develop. Find a style that is mine, unique, and not a copy. Becuase, as you previously stated, writing as Mozart is not equally good as it was then. And that can be demonstrated using something you previously stated: music has to do with expectiation. and being in my time requiers different management of listeners expecatations. I am, contraty to Haydns contemporaries, not surprised by huge dynamic contrasts. I am, contrary to Berlioz' time, not blown away by trombonne choirs from each corner from the concert hall, playing a tuba mirum, or something.

These things have happened. They were right at the time, and now people start to know them.

I am not saying it has lost its appeal. it still functions, but I like to take the challenge of think of something new.

Great literary writers do not write gibberish, objecting to the fact that their language is the language of the past. James Joyce came very close, but even then his language was rooted in an infinitude of reference to the past. What they do is take words, sentences, phrases, plot structures, and do things with them that are interesting. I do not see why we ought in music to aspire toward some undefinable and naive ideal of being true to some arbitrary value of originality. If we discovered a manuscript by Beethoven and declared it a masterpiece, and then realised that it was a forgery by some 21st century hack, the notes on the page remain exactly the same. Why, suddenly and inexplicably, does that music then become bad?

So, in what is at best an oblique answer to Marzique's question, (I do not believe from past observation that you desire any serious discussion, but I'm giving you the benefit of the doubt here, since Jrcramer is clearly keen of having a real discussion about the merits of a modern idiom) I'll say: why do you even care to be "modern"? I fear that many of the most original composers were not trying particularly hard to be modern. Scriabin wrote what he thought sounded interesting to him. Prokofiev's very first pieces featured his natural affinity for asymmetry, tritones, percussive use of the piano, etc.

Just write stuff, listen to stuff, and hopefully the notes will take you places. Or maybe they won't, but we ought not care. Cry me a river.

For me it is not perse about defending "modern". But the time in which something is written matters. Context matters. And the artist of today should approach his challenges with answers of today. Not by throwing all past learned stuff away, I value tradition too much :) But the attitude not to learn or try something is doing injustice to musical history itself.

If I write like Beethoven, it is called plagiarism. And while some would consider that an art-form, I rather not.

http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/690/borionm.jpg/

The above link is an example of what i just wrote down regarding "The Borion Art Form". You can download it & print in black & white the simple short exersice & play it on the piano for your pleasure but mainly to prove my point. I've still to read the previous to this post by cramer. Thank You!

If I write like Beethoven, it is called plagiarism. And while some would consider that an art-form, I rather not.

It's plagiarism only if you rewrite the Fifth Symphony and attempt to pass it as your own work. But writing in Beethoven's style? Or Tchaikovsky's? Or Xenakis's? While some would consider that irrelevant or even plagiarism, I'd rather not ;) . Or we would almost certainly be left without anything to write at all.

Many composers who try very hard to be original forget that originality is very, very, often more fun and exciting for the composer than the listener. I will make a major caveat here: that the ear can adapt to new sounds. See Stravinsky, Prokofiev, etc. But I do claim that there are inherent limits to this. So some people consider 12-tone stuff deeply moving, but I do claim that they would find any random piece of nonsense equally moving, because they would learn to like the randomness of the sounds they were hearing. It is not the *organization* of notes, no matter how intellectually pleasing, that creates the emotional response. It is the listener doing for the composer what the composer ought to have done.

I'm sorry, I know this was kind of secondary to the point you were making but I couldn't leave it unchallenged. 12-tone music is not random at all, nor does it even sound random once you know what to listen for. A tone row creates a consistent set of interval relations between all notes in a piece that is perceptible to the ear. Take this row for example:

E, Bb, A, Eb, F, B, C, Gb, Ab, D, Db, G

Regardless of transposition, retrograde or inversion, the only intervals in any form of this row will be minor 2nds/major 7ths, major 2nds/minor 7ths and tritones. Whether you are aware of this or not while listening to the piece, it will still seem on the surface to have a level of cohesion and consistency as the piece will be dominated by the unique sound of mostly just these intervals in combination.

The serial method isn't supposed to create the emotional content, nor has anybody ever expected it to do so. It is simply an organisational tool and doesn't really have any effect at all on the aesthetic of the music it is used to produce. If I played you 3 pieces of serial music: one by Berg, one by Webern and one by Stravinsky, you would know instantly that they were all written by different composers. Also, listen to anything by Webern from the period before he started using serial technique then listen to anything serial by Webern. You will find that the overall aesthetic is basically the same in both pieces, almost as if the serial method was unnecessary in the first place and only a means to an end rather than being the end itself...

...which brings me to the original point of the thread. There is no use looking for a contemporary system or "correct" method because such things are simply a means to an end. The most important thing is to have an artistic vision of your own. While you develop that, the best thing you can do in my opinion is to immerse yourself in music from all eras to develop your ear and analyse as many scores as you can to get a feel for how certain effects/textures etc. are notated. The more music you study/listen to, the more chance you have of fully developing that vision.