The State Of Contemporary Classical Music, 2014

Hey guys, I made a post on Reddit recently, and it did not receive a great reception, most people were spouting some nonsense about how they liked "tonality", or how I was full of myself. Trying to put contemporary music in a nutshell or something. Interested in your responses to what I wrote (revised for you guys):

Still trying to get a sense of the scene. I've been reading a lot of websites, listening to podcasts and reading perspectives of new music, still don't feel I quite get it.

As far as I can tell, the major categories of composers active today fall under one of the below categories:

Approaches with some validity:

* Lachenmann clones
* Ferneyhough clones
* French school (including "electronic" or computer assisted)
* "Avant-garde" (i.e. improvisation, conceptual art, and offshoots of popular traditions)
* Postmoderns (recontextualize/deconstruct old styles)

* Reactionary Consonance (lamonte young, part, ben johnston) <- a cohesive trend even if they're not all coming from the same place ideologically 

Dead ends:

Then there are the people who are eternally trying to bring back tonality, which essentially entails appropriating a Romantic aesthetic infused with one or more of:

* "ethnic" flavour on top of something old
* "pop" topoi (including american style "minimalism" a la reich or adams)
* narcissistic philistinism (creating what's intended to be a grand opus, which is actually just a string of tired cliches)

everyone else out there who has a name seems to be primarily commercially oriented.

Well, I don't really know which kind of answer you want. Just agreeing with you is a superficial thing to do, as I didn't have enough time to be sure about it yet (as if it were possible to be sure about it...).

You know, many theorist and historians claim that music will retrocede. People started to try so many different things, the experimental music went to such an extreme that it will now retrocede....

I don't really know if I agree with it. We have some good clues, like the Reactionay Consonance group you stated before. Penderecki said himself that he is going to step back a bit in music, as we experimented a lot for a long time...

And by writing this comment, I've come up with a hypothesis:

- Throughout music history, aesthetics has evolved and moved on. Whenever we got stuck in a single style, people got bored and tried to achieve a new era (like baroque -> classicism). We've been always doing this... finding new paths, new things, new aesthetic. What if people now are not trying to go further, but to widen the existing styles? I mean, Reactionary Consonance is a clear widening of tonal concept. Hey! We just took of from tonalism (Romantic era) to an atonal universe, but we missed something (that these guys from RC are building now). It's like a thunder coming from a cloud: the electrons try to find a path by all means to earth without looking left or right (just front). What if we reached earth already and we need to look back and widen our paths?

I'm not saying that we really reached the limit, but if someday we do reach it (if something like this really exists), we will need to look back and expand our paths of renaissance, couterpoint, sonata and whole tone scale...

Many composer have already done this many times!!! Look ar romanticism: many composers started composing with ecclesiastic modes again. Although it was a feature from medieval era and renaissance, they've widened its concept with novelties of romantic era.

The same happens with many Neoclassical movements.

What if the way now is not look forward, but backward?

(I mean, I REALLY don't know, I'm just thinking with you guys)

I definitely agree that there were many paths left untaken that are worthy of revisiting. There is a question of relevance to contemporary audiences, however. If someone writes something today in (for instance) the classical style, fat chance anyone will take him seriously, even if he really put his heart into it.

I definitely agree that there were many paths left untaken that are worthy of revisiting. There is a question of relevance to contemporary audiences, however. If someone writes something today in (for instance) the classical style, fat chance anyone will take him seriously, even if he really put his heart into it.

You should compose in whatever manner you want with out the vain notion that it will gain recognition. I've said it before and I'll say it again, you can't fake inspiration and good music knows no era. I only have one rule when I compose, the music needs to inspire me and light a fire within me. If it achieves that than everything else is irrelevant as far as I'm concerned. 

I think you're overcomplicating things a bit. Music can easily be divided into three broad categories—emotional, kinetic, spiritual. For composers in the first category music is primarily about expressing and exploring emotional states. It has found its greatest success, in the present day, in film music, but also retains a foothold in classical music (figures such as Austenite and Lowell Liebermann), metal and some forms of country. For composers in the second category—the oldest of the three, by far—music is intimately connected to the dance. Currently this genre is dominated by rock, pop, hip-hop and similar phenomena, though some classical music belongs here as well (Glass, Max Richter, John Adams). For composers in the third category music is an expression of the ineffable, an object of worship—thus spiritual music is not religious, as it would displace the deity in question. This genre is most successful in classical music where the reverential atmosphere can be enforced by concert hall traditions.

Classical music—most of which is spiritual in nature—can thus in turn be divided into four categories, with some overlap with other forms of music: I think of these as constructivism, deconstructivism, non- or anticonstructivism and reconstructivism. Constructivists are trying to build something new, in the Marxist sort of way; something that synthesizes its antecedents to build something greater. These are composers like Brian Ferneyhough and Francis Dhomont and Masami Akita. Deconstructivists take a more conservationist approach, recycling material in order to change existing traditions rather than turn them into new ones; think of Gabriel Prokofiev or Peter Ablinger or Laurence Crane. Anticonstructivists don't believe newness is desirable or even possible; pessimistically, the language of music has been exhausted, or optimistically, a sublime experience must be presented in a familiar way. Bent Sørensen, Valentin Silvestrov, Georg Friedrich Haas might all be examples. Reconstructivists' approach is ultimately about the extinguishment of the self. An ascetic approach to musical spirituality, they typically devote themselves to a single composer or style of the past; there are few of these, but they have found some success—see Brian Newbould's compositions in the style of Schubert, or Deryck Cooke's symphony in the style of Mahler. The severe restrictions of the reconstructivist approach mean it will never be as widespread as the others, but it has nevertheless had a degree of influence, particularly on the HIP movement (historically informed performance practice).

Classical music—most of which is spiritual in nature—can thus in turn be divided into four categories, with some overlap with other forms of music: I think of these as constructivism, deconstructivism, non- or anticonstructivism and reconstructivism. Constructivists are trying to build something new, in the Marxist sort of way; something that synthesizes its antecedents to build something greater. These are composers like Brian Ferneyhough and Francis Dhomont and Masami Akita. Deconstructivists take a more conservationist approach, recycling material in order to change existing traditions rather than turn them into new ones; think of Gabriel Prokofiev or Peter Ablinger or Laurence Crane. Anticonstructivists don't believe newness is desirable or even possible; pessimistically, the language of music has been exhausted, or optimistically, a sublime experience must be presented in a familiar way. Bent Sørensen, Valentin Silvestrov, Georg Friedrich Haas might all be examples. Reconstructivists' approach is ultimately about the extinguishment of the self. An ascetic approach to musical spirituality, they typically devote themselves to a single composer or style of the past; there are few of these, but they have found some success—see Brian Newbould's compositions in the style of Schubert, or Deryck Cooke's symphony in the style of Mahler. The severe restrictions of the reconstructivist approach mean it will never be as widespread as the others, but it has nevertheless had a degree of influence, particularly on the HIP movement (historically informed performance practice).

This is a great great reflection upon music. We are lucky to have the opportunity to read it...

I find these subdivisions quite interesting to read, although I can well imagine the way the Reddit-populus responsed; the derogatory terms "dead end" and even "clones" in the list you deem valid, sound quite 'Wagnerian' (ie full of yourself, which I think is a dead end ;) )

kidding aside, I was glad to see this topic. I'd love to see whether the lists of prv and shadowwolf can be harmonised. But its always hard to refelct on your own time. It requirers you to stand above it al, which implies an objectivity (or at least a solely descriptive role), something I believe to be impossible.

To p7rv I'd like to ask, why do you want to map this time? Why do you want to get a sense of the scene?

(to be clear: I want it too, and I find your (or shadowwolfs) categories helpful. Not that I think that it is the definitive reflection on the scene, but in the sense that it is how you perceive it. )

For composers in the first category music is primarily about expressing and exploring emotional states. It has found its greatest success, in the present day, in film music, but also retains a foothold in classical music (figures such as Austenite and Lowell Liebermann), metal and some forms of country.

:horrified: Well... at least no musicologist is going to get a headache trying to fit my work into a category.

Classical music—most of which is spiritual in nature—can thus in turn be divided into four categories, with some overlap with other forms of music: I think of these as constructivism, deconstructivism, non- or anticonstructivism and reconstructivism. Constructivists are trying to build something new, in the Marxist sort of way; something that synthesizes its antecedents to build something greater. These are composers like Brian Ferneyhough and Francis Dhomont and Masami Akita. Deconstructivists take a more conservationist approach, recycling material in order to change existing traditions rather than turn them into new ones; think of Gabriel Prokofiev or Peter Ablinger or Laurence Crane. Anticonstructivists don't believe newness is desirable or even possible; pessimistically, the language of music has been exhausted, or optimistically, a sublime experience must be presented in a familiar way. Bent Sørensen, Valentin Silvestrov, Georg Friedrich Haas might all be examples. Reconstructivists' approach is ultimately about the extinguishment of the self. An ascetic approach to musical spirituality, they typically devote themselves to a single composer or style of the past; there are few of these, but they have found some success—see Brian Newbould's compositions in the style of Schubert, or Deryck Cooke's symphony in the style of Mahler. The severe restrictions of the reconstructivist approach mean it will never be as widespread as the others, but it has nevertheless had a degree of influence, particularly on the HIP movement (historically informed performance practice).

This is when things get meaty, though. I'd think this is a very valid subdivision, and quite objective for that matter. And I like that there is no implied disqualification for any of these tendencies, since one can't arbitrarily define what is a valid approach for our time and what is not, according solely on what someone deems relevant (what is relevant, after all?). Therefore I'm not daring to encapsulate the whole universe of "contemporary music" in an era which distinguishes itself for not having a single "common practice", stylistically speaking. What I can do is to see where do I fit as an individual composer. For instance it's pretty obvious that I'm perceived as an archetypical "emotionalist" according to ShadowWolf's first categorization - but could I be described as a "deconstructivist" or an "anticonstructivist" according to the second categorization? Or perhaps a "reconstructivist" devoted to "complete" someone else's unfinished legacy? Am I an exponent of a "dead end" (if there is such a thing as a "dead" end as much as a "dead" mind) or just a Reactionary Consonantist? Now that's some soul-searching to do...

Music can easily be divided into three broad categories—emotional, kinetic, spiritual.

I think music can have any combination of these traits (all 8 possibilities)

Classical music—most of which is spiritual in nature—can thus in turn be divided into four categories, with some overlap with other forms of music: I think of these as constructivism, deconstructivism, non- or anticonstructivism and reconstructivism. Constructivists are trying to build something new, in the Marxist sort of way; something that synthesizes its antecedents to build something greater. These are composers like Brian Ferneyhough and Francis Dhomont and Masami Akita. Deconstructivists take a more conservationist approach, recycling material in order to change existing traditions rather than turn them into new ones; think of Gabriel Prokofiev or Peter Ablinger or Laurence Crane. Anticonstructivists don't believe newness is desirable or even possible; pessimistically, the language of music has been exhausted, or optimistically, a sublime experience must be presented in a familiar way. Bent Sørensen, Valentin Silvestrov, Georg Friedrich Haas might all be examples. Reconstructivists' approach is ultimately about the extinguishment of the self. An ascetic approach to musical spirituality, they typically devote themselves to a single composer or style of the past; there are few of these, but they have found some success—see Brian Newbould's compositions in the style of Schubert, or Deryck Cooke's symphony in the style of Mahler. The severe restrictions of the reconstructivist approach mean it will never be as widespread as the others, but it has nevertheless had a degree of influence, particularly on the HIP movement (historically informed performance practice).

I also have a problem with this rubric (even though it is interesting, is it original?). Your "deconstructionists" and "anticonstructivists" both draw on existing materials and techniques, although (arguably) perhaps in slightly different ways. I'm not sure I'd classify "reconstructivists" along with other composers, by the way, perhaps this relates to the aforementioned effacing quality.

Having a rubric which hinges on one's stance towards creating new materials, I think, is a little too broad to be useful. Problematising creation itself is very 90s conceptual art, anyway.

I think my own aesthetic orientation, in a way, veers more towards what I termed "narcissistic philistinism", in the sense that I believe that I can create great works that are whole and worthy unto themselves. Creation is possible, I hold, beyond mere Hegelian synthesis. I hope that through a lot of effort and talent I will be able to live up to this vision. 

Why do you want to get a sense of the scene?

Both as a listener, and as a composer.

I want to be able to apprehend, and to create, things that are relevant, original, and valuable.

They're all dead ends, all aesthetics are equally invalid.

At least tonality has a foothold in modern music with Bobby Beers, we can rest soundly.

They're all dead ends, all aesthetics are equally invalid.

 

At least tonality has a foothold in modern music with Bobby Beers, we can rest soundly.

>>>>>>3edgy5u

At least tonality has a foothold in modern music with Bobby Beers, we can rest soundly.

Nah, he's just an overrated hack in an unimportant website. Look elsewhere.

I think you're overcomplicating things a bit. Music can easily be divided into three broad categories—emotional, kinetic, spiritual.

 

can thus in turn be divided into four categories, with some overlap with other forms of music: I think of these as constructivism, deconstructivism, non- or anticonstructivism and reconstructivism.

… and in turn you are oversimplifying.

It certainly cannot be easily divided into any of these categories. Every great composer has a highly personalized aesthetic design which exhibits signs of all of these things which arguably means it falls under none of them. Only gimmicky composers can be pigeonholed in such a way - also I understand the terms you mentioned differently than you defined them, especially deconstruction which is definitely not conservative.

I also disagree strongly with your broad categories as I find them arbitrary and simplistic. If I humor your definitions anyway, it's quite easy to conclude that without emotion music is pointless, and without kinesis it is stagnant. I don't understand your definition of spirituality, it seems only to denote great works that are respected. That of course has nothing to do with the music - it either is great or it isn't. It's a consequence of the work's greatness, not a characteristic or attribute. Nobody says: "I am going to write great music that is spiritual" or on the flipside: "I want to write meaningless kinetic music," at least not if they are being serious. One writes good music that is to be respected if one is capable and poor music if one is not, unless the work in question is just a pointless project you care nothing about written for monetary other extramusical reasons - I would hardly call that a legitimate musical offering.

One of our most post-modern traits is our willingness to quickly descend into a Divergent-style rush to categorize everyone and everything into some kind of watertight compartment.

One of our most post-modern traits is our willingness to quickly descend into a Divergent-style rush to categorize everyone and everything into some kind of watertight compartment.

Splendid point you have here!

BTW, I became quite curious to know more about how you guys would describe your own style? By that I don't ask for categories, but for a description.

Who cares? Write music and let the musicologists 25 years from now sort it out.

I think you're overcomplicating things a bit. Music can easily be divided into three broad categories—emotional, kinetic, spiritual.

Oh wow. Right. "Easily be divided" into three broad categories? I find your divisions rather ridiculous, specifically the first one. I mean, isolating music that (and I quote):

For composers in the first category music is primarily about expressing and exploring emotional states.

Since, you know, exploring something so rare and obscure as EMOTIONS (in art, no less!) requires a specific division. Seriously? So you mean to tell me that music in your other two categories do NOT "express and explore" emotional states? Maybe you think that's not a "primary" focus, but then again how do you even know that? How do you even go about telling if that's the case?

But this doesn't mean the other two divisions make any more sense. So you figure music "connected to dance" needs its own category, when in reality the only parameter you seem to be looking at is the prominence of rhythm. I don't see the point, again, since I don't see how this is any different than giving incidental music its own category (at least according to your own reasoning.) Wait, that would actually make more sense than your suggestion, nevermind. Oh yeah, by the way? Every composer that has ever written a minuet or any kind of dance piece would fit here according to you, so that's the VAST MAJORITY of classical composers. Or do you mean composers who only write dance-type music? Since the examples you gave make no sense, listing minimalism as if that was inherently connected to dance (which is arguably true in some cases like Steve Reich's Drumming! Oh wait I wasn't supposed to mention specific works, right? Is that how this works?) Glass also wrote a violin concerto, should we also put him in all three categories then??

The third is just a joke. I don't know, you wanted to equate ritual behaviors with concert-situation? Is that the parallel you wanted to draw? So it's spiritual since, uh, you can't drink beer, dance and scream during a performance of Beethoven? Also, you say ineffable, but as far as I could tell people write music because music is the proper medium for those ideas that cannot be expressed in any other medium that isn't music. I mean, I don't see anyone saying "Man, this 4 voice fugue in baroque style I'm writing would work out so much better as a stage play instead!" When music is insufficient on its own, you can add things to it, such as text and scenery (operas for example) or perhaps it needs to complement something (incidental music.) There's no 1-1 translation of music to any other art form, so even bringing this up is a waste of time.

Honestly I'd prefer something more complex but that actually makes sense if I'm categorizing music. In fact, music is so diverse that ANY method of categorization is a disaster if it tries to be more general than fact-based things, such as music that comes from a specific geographical region, or time period, etc. Style and aesthetic categorization are always, therefore, coupled with factual information to actually place it somewhere objective. Even then it's a problem, just like throwing terminology around is--oops getting ahead of myself there.

Classical music—most of which is spiritual in nature—can thus in turn be divided into four categories, with some overlap with other forms of music: I think of these as constructivism, deconstructivism, non- or anticonstructivism and reconstructivism.

Ah. Seriously? Is that what the kids are doing these days, huh? I'm sorry, but if you're just going to list ways in which artistic creation can be justified according to the ways in which the material itself is manipulated in relation to its cultural and historical context, we can be here all day. You missed a bunch too, like people who write music just to spite your type of categorization schemes or people who create music without needing any of the motives you listed, really.

What's kind of hilarious about your analysis there is that, taking into account only a single composer's output, you can find all those categories and probably much much more in terms of artistic motivation. So what's the point, really? Categorizing by piece if we happen to even know what the motivations were? What if we don't? What if the composer didn't ever say? What if it's an anonymous piece?

Next you'll tell me you can infer these things from the musical material on its own, at which point I would love to see the amazing mental gymnastics you'd need to pull off to justify such a ridiculous proposition.

Protip: Don't.

Where are you getting your information from...? I've had this discussion with many in the composition faculty at my school, and most agree that composers are actually reverting back to a more "tonal" or at least pitch centered approach... I don't know where you're getting this "dead end" from. Ellen Zwilich, Sergio Assad, Leo Brouwer, Corigliano, and Dan Welcher are just a few examples, and all extremely successful composers. 

Where are you getting your information from.

Just opinions I'm forming.

I never said pitch centered = dead end

Just opinions I'm forming.

 

I never said pitch centered = dead end

But you did say "Dead ends:Then there are the people who are eternally trying to bring back tonality, which essentially entails appropriating a Romantic aesthetic infused with one or more of..." First of all, pitch centered music is tonal. Second, tonality isn't a dead end. Thirdly, out of the "approaches with some validity" I would say that only 2 are relevant... some, I'll admit, I don't even know about.

Do you know who the big composers are now a days?  Most of what's winning competitions and actually getting played by performers contradicts what you consider a "dead end". Reich won the Pulitzer Prize in 2009... so much for dead end (mind you, I'm not even a fan of his music).These threads are pretty annoying. Whether it be "Lachenmann clones" or "tonal" music, none of it is "dead" or "valid". Sure one can think it's outdated or not their cup of tea, but don't say it is a dead end.