Is It True Composers Don't Live Up To Classical Standards These Days?

Okay, I'll be honest: I kind of stole the idea for this thread from a different forum, but I found it really interesting and a really good topic of discussion! The only reason why I posted it here is because I wanted to know what you YCer's think about it. I'll post a link and quote of the original post. 

"Bach, Handel, Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert -- just over a century of music. All earlier composers spent their lives preparing the way for them, all later composers trying to live up to them. Can this be true?" 

Link: http://www.talkclassical.com/33669-can-true.html (Just so I don't get slammed for copying! ;) )

I'll also post my response to this forum too. 

"The problem with any art, truly, is that greatness is not always obtained by a musician or artist in their lifetimes. Now there are exceptions. In reality, modern music is not an artform someone just one day thought to do or go to, and back then, it was the same case. What we term classical music was as somepoint modern and it was ever-progressive as it is nowadays. The great composers are the ones we remember for their invaluable contribution to either progressing the era into an absolute form and mastering the elements we know nowadays (i.e. Haydn, Mozart) or simply innovating the way music was composed (Beethoven). I can't say that Bach and Handel innovated the way music was composed directly into the classical period however because their styles didn't change all too much from the time they actively started composing to the day they died. It changed respectfully within their given eras, but ultimately, it was their offspring and the children of that era that brought about true classicism (C.P.E Bach, J.C. Bach, etc). I'd say that Haydn and Mozart were more influenced by those composers than Handel or Bach, in truth. Don't believe me? Put a symphony by JC Bach next to an earlier symphony of Mozart (1 - 24), you'll hear the similarities. Beethoven's style literally changed into the darkness of romanticism, thus is why I said what I said earlier. 

And to be fair, music has just been taking the same pattern since the Renaissance, especially since Opera came about, because once that happened, music wasn't just a tool of religious ceremony or nobility trying to be entertained, it became an industry for everybody. This is just the part of the evolutionary process we're stuck in. I read somewhere (I think it was Fux's Gradus Ad Parnassum) that back in the Baroque Era, music was subtley changing every ten years, if not, changing a lot. Sound familiar? Well, in the 1900's we had ragtime and primitive jazz. 1910's, little jazz ensembles, 1920's, big bands. 1930's: Dance music. Not to even go into what was happening with contempory concert music at the time (Stravinsky, Schoenberg, Rachmaninoff, Debussy) etc. Eventually, music got less strict and composers thought of any possible thing that hadn't been done yet until today we have a countless number of different musics in our culture...and it's growing. So many differing genres! Mozart would go nuts! 

To say that all contempory composers try to live up to them is not an accurate statement whatsoever. Mozart was a child prodigy of the keyboard and composition, but there have been better and worse since. Go look at Mozart's first Violin Sonata, K. 6. *shivers* It's not about that, though. Composers just simply use their music as a reference point to learn proper methods for playing and composition, and to learn what to try next. And it's always been that way. And it was said previously that they couldn't do what contemporary composers could do. True. It just comes with the times. 

Last thing, I promise (and sorry for the long post because I thought this was interesting), I believe that the main reason why those specific composers' music is so beloved to us is because it's been part of our culture for over two hundred years. Western civilization has come to put their artwork above all else because it's the best we've got, and it's what we've come to know best. Human tendency is to stick with what we know."

(I'm not advertising that other site in ANY way as I would like the discussion to stay strictly within this site, so forum moderators, don't tackle me for this. :P) 

Anyway, what do you guys think? 

"Bach, Handel, Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert -- just over a century of music. All earlier composers spent their lives preparing the way for them, all later composers trying to live up to them. Can this be true?"

Not really, you'll get at least as many great composers in any other given century of music.

Like, look at 1850-1950. A century of music and you have Brahms, Wagner, Verdi, Tchaikovsky, Bruckner, Mahler, Puccini, Strauss, Rachmaninov, Debussy, Bartók, Stravinsky & Prokofiev, along with early Shostakovich, and that's just classical music. Could just as easily say all earlier composers spent their lives preparing the way for them. For the ~1715-1830 group if you're including Bach and Handel you also need to include Rameau, Couperin le Grand, Scarlatti and Vivaldi.

Hell, in the interregnum (1830-1850) alone you have Chopin, Mendelssohn, Liszt, Schumann, Berlioz and Bellini, all of whom are standard repertoire figures beloved of listeners.

I think that brings us to the main problem really which is that there is too much music. We have to thin it out some so it's not just Bach and Haydn and Beethoven getting all the attention. To start with, Beethoven is far too overplayed, causing his music to lose its value and uniqueness due to its omnipresence. To preserve what's left of its value we need to destroy the music, in order to preserve it in collective memory—the "Age of Beethoven", 1770-2014. Beethoven's achievement would then become far more valuable to future generations if all that was left of it was the documentation in text of its effects on people—we have already forgotten how to listen to it. The Ninth Symphony no longer inspires terror and awe, the Fourteenth Quartet has lost its nature of intense inwardness and become simply comfortable background music. Send them to the bonfire so that the memory of them will inspire us further. The same could profitably be done with Bach and Mozart, and the works of Haydn, Handel and Schubert are far too numerous in number and could easily be reduced by one-half or more without much loss.

I think that brings us to the main problem really which is that there is too much music. We have to thin it out some so it's not just Bach and Haydn and Beethoven getting all the attention. To start with, Beethoven is far too overplayed, causing his music to lose its value and uniqueness due to its omnipresence. To preserve what's left of its value we need to destroy the music, in order to preserve it in collective memory—the "Age of Beethoven", 1770-2014. Beethoven's achievement would then become far more valuable to future generations if all that was left of it was the documentation in text of its effects on people—we have already forgotten how to listen to it. The Ninth Symphony no longer inspires terror and awe, the Fourteenth Quartet has lost its nature of intense inwardness and become simply comfortable background music. Send them to the bonfire so that the memory of them will inspire us further. The same could profitably be done with Bach and Mozart, and the works of Haydn, Handel and Schubert are far too numerous in number and could easily be reduced by one-half or more without much loss.

Ha! I love that idea. But if we did that, Daniel Barenboim would be so pissed. :P 

Seriously though, if that's actually something serious you think should be done, then who would there be to learn from besides modern composers? We need to keep our roots. Young students start out by playing Mozart or Haydn and progressively work up because they're a good starting point. Classicism is the basis for most compositional styles nowadays anyway, but if you think they should be played less and given less attention, then that's fair. 

I mean in that mindset, we should just say that Shakespeare's plays be destroyed because he's so great, or that Van Gogh painting's be burnt. Just because they're over played and known almost too well doesn't mean they don't provide a standard for the music industry even today. 

If you want to understand this, go look for this book:

Kafka: towards a minor literature, by Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari.

Although it's about literature, you can extend this to other arts as well (as I believe they do in the book). It explains most of the situations we have today in contemporary arts (not just this, but modern art and the avant-garde as well).

That begs a question:
What is it about contemporary work isn't "as good" as Mozart/Beethoven/etc.? What is the measuring stick that people are using to determine that the "greats" were better than composers today, in order to make claims that composers don't live up to "classical standards"?
 

If you want to understand this, go look for this book:

 

Kafka: towards a minor literature, by Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari.

 

Although it's about literature, you can extend this to other arts as well (as I believe they do in the book). It explains most of the situations we have today in contemporary arts (not just this, but modern art and the avant-garde as well).

I don't like postmodern pseudophilosophers.

Classical music is put on a pedestal and I don't really think it deserves to be, the greatest gift classical music has given to new, young composers is a wide vocabulary of tonal language. Also, because of the interest it has led to even better made strings, winds, perc., keys and brass. So two things, a deep and intelligent way to understand tonality and high-quality instruments.

Composers nowadays I don't think are pressured to be like our ancestors and it's mainly because there is still more to be discovered with musical expression. You might have a teacher that will pressure you, but if you do have a teacher that does, know that he/she is rare because most composition teachers I've met are more into you finding your own voice rather than imitating somebody else's, now there are exercises and quotes you can put into a piece but overall they want your music to be original so there isn't really any pressure for composers to be like Beethoven or Bach. If you major composition in college you'll be expected to write in the form and style of baroque composers but your education there will be focused on the new music you're creating, the rules of the past are only there for you to use, not to be strictly followed.

I dissagree.

Yes, people aren't trying to write in the style of Baroque / Classical composers. The styles are definately different, but I would still say what we're making now is far inferior.

If you compare the best modern composers (Bernard Herrmann et al) to the greats of pre-1900, they can't hold a candle. There is nowhere near the structural or harmonic complexity. Maybe some minimalists do some interesting polyrhythms, but that's it.

When I compare my own compositions to Vivaldi, I think they're scraggy. When I compare them to John Williams, I think they're brilliant.

I don't want my music to be *like* Vivaldi's, I only wish it were as good.

Beethoven, Bach, Mozart and the other acknowledged greats will still be listened to in another 200 years.  I think very little of what is being written now, will survive the test of time, though the one advantage is that with the internet, much modern music will at least exist in some form almost indefinitely.

I dissagree.

Yes, people aren't trying to write in the style of Baroque / Classical composers. The styles are definately different, but I would still say what we're making now is far inferior.

 

If you compare the best modern composers (Bernard Herrmann et al) to the greats of pre-1900, they can't hold a candle. There is nowhere near the structural or harmonic complexity. Maybe some minimalists do some interesting polyrhythms, but that's it.

When I compare my own compositions to Vivaldi, I think they're scraggy. When I compare them to John Williams, I think they're brilliant.

 

I don't want my music to be *like* Vivaldi's, I only wish it were as good.

Shouldn't it be the other way, though? They say that Vivaldi didn't write 1500 concertos... that he wrote 1 concerto 1500 times. John Williams has written many things that are differing (not that Vivaldi hasn't), but Vivaldi stuck to what he knew best. John Williams has not only composed works for films (which are brilliant), but he writes concert works too, also having proven himself in several venues and genres of music. Vivaldi, in my humble opinion, has nothing on John Williams. I mean, we have people that dedicate their lives to composing music like Vivaldi, and they can, because it's not hard music to grasp if you study it. I would dare say we have no composer that could compose music the way John Williams does. Just my thought, though.

I've only skimmed the thread so far so I'm not sure if it's been said...but I think composers today have more to live up to. There are more genres and styles today than there were in the common practice period, they intersect/overlap constantly and music is more accessible to write as well as listen to. The rules are being broken with more success, plus I can't imagine "art music" is as profitable right now as it was back then, what with popular music being what it is right now in current society. It's hard to live up to standards that are harder and less profitable to reach, and as great as "the greats" are I'm skeptical they'd be seen the same way if they were around today (unpopular opinion time.)

Today, we live in times where everything has to be instant. It has also infected many composers: no more patience to write music for several months (thank God for copy paste, right?), no more patience to create music which would last 20 minutes or more (thank God for minimalism, right?), also lack of interest to deploy good exisiting material into something fresh. The composers are either living in the world of pop or cross-over music or still believing they can invent something. Still, there are some great composers which live up to classical standards: Kalevi Aho (not always but quite frequently), Erkki Sven Tüür, Magnus Lindberg, perhaps also John Adams in his best music, Mark Andre Dalbavie. My personal wish is to attempt to come close as possible to these names.

Today, we live in times where everything has to be instant. It has also infected many composers: no more patience to write music for several months (thank God for copy paste, right?), no more patience to create music which would last 20 minutes or more (thank God for minimalism, right?), also lack of interest to deploy good exisiting material into something fresh. The composers are either living in the world of pop or cross-over music or still believing they can invent something. Still, there are some great composers which live up to classical standards: Kalevi Aho (not always but quite frequently), Erkki Sven Tüür, Magnus Lindberg, perhaps also John Adams in his best music, Mark Andre Dalbavie. My personal wish is to attempt to come close as possible to these names.

Do you think that there is nothing left to create/invent musically?

Do you think that there is nothing left to create/invent musically?

Seriously: very little.

While I can't claim to know whether there is or isn't more to still invent within the world of music (to be honest, I'd like to remain optimistic), I can certainly see where you're coming from Sojar. I've often thought to myself some of the things you said in your post and there was a time when I might have been guilty of some of it (shorter compositions and using copy and paste too much  :P ).

The situation of classical no longer has the sense of practicality associated with writing music that the masters of old had. The key in the Viennese Classical era, for example, was to write music as quickly as possible to either appease the needs of a composer's patron or to invest it in the then budding publishing industry. Either option usually made them enough money to at least squeeze by. Families living in those times were musically inclined regardless of their actual ability, playing string quartets as a means of entertainment for example. I don't know of too many families doing that these days, but we do have an abundance of amateur guitarists and wannabe rock musicians playing/singing covers of well-known pop/rock tunes.

Classical music today has simply gone by the wayside in terms of being the forefront of musical thought whether we like it or not. Jazz is becoming that way as well.  Composers today are writing niche music for a niche audience, which allows great artistic freedom but at the same time makes being a composer rather nonviable as a profession - except for the extremely lucky. I think the best - if overused - example of an avant-garde composer living in a less-than-accepting musical landscape is Charles Ives - he realized that being original doesn't make money and living without money sucks.

A little off topic but I thought I'd say it anyway.

While I can't claim to know whether there is or isn't more to still invent within the world of music (to be honest, I'd like to remain optimistic), I can certainly see where you're coming from Sojar. I've often thought to myself some of the things you said in your post and there was a time when I might have been guilty of some of it (shorter compositions and using copy and paste too much  :P ).

Copy and pasting too much = minimalism, doesn't it? xD

Funnily enough I was guilty of that stuff back when I was in my pseudo minimalist phase :P

Ugh. This topic is so subjective. You could look at it from two absolutely opposite vantage points.

1. Things will never be the same, the greats are gone, and the best is behind us. This is the "walked uphill both ways in the snow barefoot" viewpoint. 

2. The "things are only getting better" and "the old generation isn't in-touch" anymore, "we've moved beyond that" approach. 

In my opinion, both are radical. I posted recently in another thread about my thoughts on Boulez's comment that art (like, ALL the art) is too sentimental and should thusly be destroyed. That falls into the latter. But there are also those who fall into the staunchly conservative camp. It's a matter of taste, beauty in the eye of the beholder, etc. If you like it, then it's better. 

Something else that I was reading about the other day contained a quote from Milton Babbitt. He (ostensibly) said: 

"Listen, don't worry about whether or not the music sounds coherent to you the first time you hear it. What about the first time you hear a sentence in Hungarian? -- assuming you're interested in listening to and learning Hungarian."

​It got me to thinking about how the age of (electronic) recordings has influenced the direction of music. It was around the same time (at least the same decade or so) that music was more than just available to the live audience that twelve-tone music began to appear. I'm not implying any causality or relation, but I feel the opportunity to replay and listen again and again to music like that from Serialist composers (but perhaps not minimalists like Pärt or 'new complexity' folk) means that it's almost a necessity... I don't think that music like that of Schoenberg's twelve-tone stuff (and certainly not a lot of what came after) would have been as easy to approach in one pass at a single live performance. Just a thought. 

Someone else shared with me an article they read (I didn't see it) claiming the recording industry has promoted greater virtuosity among artists due to greater exposure to, I suppose, their competition. But that's beside the point. 

I think this is all highly subjective, and once words like "better" start getting tossed around, then we're just comparing opinions. 

Nah, there's so much music I've never heard, just that no one's writing it :)

I consider music to be like a rain drop in a pond of water. For every drop of innovation, there's ripples and waves that expand upon that drop until the next drop falls for the cycle to repeat. Just as in physics, when two waves meet, they briefly merge and ultimately pass through one another. These drops, the so called genres, and waves in the pond, musical expression via melodia and rythmia, develop the musical repertoire we hear today. The expanding waves are the developing musical idioms that become inspirational for the drops that have yet to be cast. Truly, the origin of uniqueness is to learn the art of what truly isn't unique. We must imitate before we can master, we must master the rules before we can break them. We must break the rules before we can truly innovate. Throughout history, the art of making music has come from the constant prep work put into it before hand. That is also the basis of education as we see it today. No matter how you think or progress throughout life, you are ultimately prepping yourself to cast the next drop. When and where it occurs is a choice of how much sacrifice that one is willing to put forth to reach it. Theoretically, we cast new drops in our own minds each and every day. Whether the information we dispense is discovered or not is another point; however, the breech point where that drop is put into societies pond is sometimes never reached, but fear not. The development that one has put into societies waves will not be in vain, for it carves a path for the willing to cast the next drop in your honor. Ultimately, we wish to be successful and prosperous. Sadly, success does not necessary lead to prosperity. Your satisfaction has to come from the mark, the waves, that you have developed. If it so happens that one manages to drop innovation, you might never even know it. Truly, one must keep sacrificing, keep creating, to destroy the foundation that one walks on. Each composer of the past and present must be respected for their contribution. It matters not if they develop or innovate; they are inevitably laying the path for the next generation. What truly matters, is the goals of the individual. What do you want to develop? What do you want to possibly innovate? Where is the path that will get you there? The vast majority of society has evolved via a method of focus. True greatness come from how you apply that focus.

I just love these type of questions. I get that people really like to philosophize about these kind of things, but ultimately it's such a loaded argument that there's no point in even trying. It'd be like asking "Could it be that the entire world before I was born was building up for that event (and that event alone) and when I die it'll fall in despair trying to relive my greatness???"

If you think that sounds narcissistic, then just imagine what that does when you use that exact same reasoning for some random piece of music some dead guy wrote hundreds of years ago!

Not really, you'll get at least as many great composers in any other given century of music. so it is not true composers don't Live up to Classical Standard these days.