[DISCUSSION] The role of contemporary?

24 minutes ago, AngelCityOutlaw said:

"Post-modernism" is not real; it was a term invented in the 60s to make it appear as though there had been an advancement in modernism. "Post-modernism" claims that it deals with the idea that no objective value judgement can be made "because all is relative", but it is this very solipsism which characterizes all modernists works.

Anyone who claims this is not the case should be asked to provide examples of "post-modern" works and compare them against "modern" ones and see if anyone can actually spot a difference.

I am no expert in philosophy, but it's difficult for me to deny a difference in the idealogies of man of the 2020's and man of the 1920's. It is my understanding that postmodernity began in the 1940s after WWII, and with its insistence that truth is relative, began to inject chance into its artistic expressions, thereby more or less removing the need for an artistic creator in the first place. I would argue that the advent of atonality was itself an expression of postmodern thought, and from it we have a host of other randomizing compositional tools: aleatoric music, indeterminacy, chance music. The standards of beauty were removed, along with the standards of everything else.

Really, though, I think we're saying the same things, just calling them by different names. Whether postmodernism is or is not separate from modernism is irrelevant. What's important is that the school of thought promoting the relativity of everything permeated the arts, too. This is what defined the classical music of the mid-to-late 20th century: an anything-goes philosophy that dares anyone to apply the standards of beauty to its artwork. The fact that so many people do not appreciate such art really calls into question whether "postmodernism" is a new era or simply a short-term reaction to reasonism. But that's a discussion for another time. 🙂 

(BTW I am not assigning any moral value to modern/postmodern expression. It simply is what it is.)

1 minute ago, AngelCityOutlaw said:

I do not believe we are talking about subjective judgement at all.

Picasso's inferiority to Bryullov, for example, is quite visceral and apparent.

Music and art are not supposed to be ugly.

To champion the deformed, the ugly, the abstract is to be anti-art.

That is a perfectly sensible claim, as only the skilled can make something beautiful

but even monkeys can make the ugly and the nonsensical

Verklärte Nacht is not beautiful? Most of Mozart I would not consider beautiful then... 

Also we are talking about people who can create art and have ideas on art. Monkeys do not. You might be against conceptualism, but beauty can also aspire from concepts. 

Lol, I think @AngelCityOutlaw and @Maarten Bauer are a modernist and "postmodernist" disagreeing on the objectivity of art.

Just now, Tónskáld said:

Lol, I think @AngelCityOutlaw and @Maarten Bauer are a modernist and "postmodernist" disagreeing on the objectivity of art.

 

I think you are right. Really great to discuss these topics with you guys. Very respectful, thoughtful and indeed fruitful discussions. 

1 minute ago, Maarten Bauer said:

I think you are right. Really great to discuss these topics with you guys. Very respectful, thoughtful and indeed fruitful discussions. 

Yes, I'm glad you posted it. I've enjoyed reading everyone's thoughts very much!

16 minutes ago, AngelCityOutlaw said:

I do not believe we are talking about subjective judgement at all.

Picasso's inferiority to Bryullov, for example, is quite visceral and apparent.

Music and art are not supposed to be ugly.

To champion the deformed, the ugly, the abstract is to be anti-art.

That is a perfectly sensible claim, as only the skilled can make something beautiful

but even monkeys can make the ugly and the nonsensical

Coming back to the idea that art must be beautiful, my opinion will always be that art must bring about something. If it does not move, it does not work, thus it failed. 

3 minutes ago, Maarten Bauer said:

Coming back to the idea that art must be beautiful, my opinion will always be that art must bring about something. If it does not move, it does not work, thus it failed. 

That's fair. I think art is a symbolic expression of the values of the culture that produced it. In times past I think it was produced primarily to appeal to or connect with human emotion. These days, with the idea that objective standards should not exist, art is accepted more as an exploration of "unboundedness." Either way, I think my opinion agrees with yours.

2 minutes ago, Tónskáld said:

These days, with the idea that objective standards should not exist, art is accepted more as an exploration of "unboundedness." 

 

Can you explain this in other words? I do not really get the point, sorry my English is not my first language. 

1 hour ago, Tónskáld said:

I am no expert in philosophy, but it's difficult for me to deny a difference in the idealogies of man of the 2020's and man of the 1920's. It is my understanding that postmodernity began in the 1940s after WWII, and with its insistence that truth is relative, began to inject chance into its artistic expressions, thereby more or less removing the need for an artistic creator in the first place. I would argue that the advent of atonality was itself an expression of postmodern thought, and from it we have a host of other randomizing compositional tools: aleatoric music, indeterminacy, chance music. The standards of beauty were removed, along with the standards of everything else.

Again though, there is just nothing about this which is fundamentally different from modernism. Also, what you describe in the bolded part is again "conceptualism"

1 hour ago, Maarten Bauer said:

Also we are talking about people who can create art and have ideas on art. Monkeys do not

So then why should "art" made by humans that can also be made by monkeys (who cannot have ideas on art) be seen as having any value?

Does that not indicate that the person would also be absent-minded?

1 hour ago, Maarten Bauer said:

You might be against conceptualism, but beauty can also aspire from concepts. 

Beauty is often born out of high-concept, but concept alone is not beautiful, though.

To quote Aristotle: "Excellence is never an accident. It is always the result of high-intention, sincere effort, and intelligent execution."

1 hour ago, Maarten Bauer said:

Coming back to the idea that art must be beautiful, my opinion will always be that art must bring about something. If it does not move, it does not work, thus it failed. 

Well, there are two things about this:

First, is that it seems to resemble artspeak. What exactly does it mean if a piece "moves"? What must it "bring about"? How do we know if a work has done this? 

The second is that, the idea that art should be beautiful and culturally affirmative were the ideas that were prevalent across cultures since the beginning of time.

It is only around the 20th Century that, thanks to guys like Greenberg and Kandinsky, that this idea was rejected and art itself was redefined into these more abstract concepts like "to move".

To accept that your opinion is the correct one is to accept that the entirety of our previous civilization was invalid. 

11 minutes ago, Maarten Bauer said:

Can you explain this in other words? I do not really get the point, sorry my English is not my first language. 

Lol, no worries. I would be much, much more lost if this discussion were in Dutch (even though Dutch and English are supposed to be the most closely related after English and Frisian).

Basically, that art today explores what it looks like not to have rules and guidelines to follow. I'm not saying that every artist creates completely at random, but if he were to do so, his artwork would still be completely acceptable by society at large. You said that art must bring about something. In this case, it's bringing about the idea that there is no objective standard.

1 hour ago, Tónskáld said:

Lol, no worries. I would be much, much more lost if this discussion were in Dutch (even though Dutch and English are supposed to be the most closely related after English and Frisian).

This is an aside, but I always find it interesting so:

Most linguists agree that Norsk (modern Norwegian) is the easiest-second language for a native English speaker to learn and vice versa, as the the syntax and grammar are very similar and a lot of the English vocabulary is taken from old Norse. My own experience with it would seem to confirm this is true. I suspect if one even put six months of serious practice to it, they could speak conversational Norsk. https://www.babbel.com/en/magazine/easiest-languages-for-english-speakers-to-learn 

1 hour ago, Maarten Bauer said:

At this point we start talking about subjective judgment, which is really tricky in such a philosophical discussion

I personally believe that quality is not per se linked to beauty. Skill is not linked to making beauty either. Schoenberg's idea of nuda Veritas made him to compose ugly music, the music itself can be doubted to be beautiful, but the composer's skill is undeniably great. Also, it is nonsense that Schoenberg was incapable of beautiful music and therefore claim that he was not skilled. 

 

The only thing I like about Arnold Schoenberg is the way he describes compositional units built upon compositional units built upon compositional units, from the Motif to the singular phrase to the Period and Sentence to the Theme to the entire Sonata. His music, I don't care for, it's too modern, too atonal, too dissonant.

Shostakovitch on the other hand is often considered to be a modernist. I wouldn't describe him as such. Sure, he does things that Ravel would probably absolutely hate. So what? Sure, his most well known symphonies are as dramatic as war itself. So what? I would describe Shostakovitch as Premodern, or in other words, what happens when Romanticism becomes more free in interval usage, throwing away the thought that the tritone has to resolve in typical fashion or even in typical suspended fashion, yet it stays tonal or at least is based on tonality. Gustav Holst is another composer I would describe as Premodern. I like pieces by Shostakovitch and Gustav Holst. I sometimes even think of Shostakovitch as "The Russian Beethoven" or "The Beethoven of the 1900s" because his compositional style has so many similarities to Beethoven's(everything based on a single motif, sudden change in dynamics on purpose, increased dissonance at the climax, a single minor chord being imposing, minor crushing the major key but getting weaker every time until it barely makes a ripple in the mended fabric that is the major key(i.e. Beethoven's Fifth Symphony esque), etc.) But when you get to things like:

• Atonality for the sake of Atonality and not as a polytonal failure (Gustav Holst's atonality in Mars I would describe as a polytonal failure, because it is polytonality that has become so unstable and warring with itself that it loses any sense of tonality at all(Seriously, if you were to end Mars from The Planets on Bb major instead of C minor, it would be no more or less resolved than the original))
• That no note is to be repeated until the whole sequence has finished - The whole idea behind serialism
• That a diminished seventh chord can be consonant if repeated a whole bunch of times
• That you can have a diminished tonic, i.e. be in Locrian for the entire piece and not just a few chords
• That all 12 notes have to be used, No Exceptions - 12 tone serialism specifically
• 13TET and beyond

That's truly modern. Shostakovitch and Gustav Holst, often considered modern, never did this at all. But they are too far away from the Romantics to be included in that list. Thus, logically, they are Premodern, not Modern, not Romantic, not anything else.

2 minutes ago, AngelCityOutlaw said:

This is an aside, but I always find it interesting so:

Most linguists agree that Norsk (modern Norwegian) is the easiest-second language for a native English speaker to learn and vice versa, as the the syntax and grammar are very similar and a lot of the English vocabulary is taken from old Norse. My own experience with it would seem to confirm this is true. I suspect if one even put six months of serious practice to it, they could speak conversational Norsk. https://www.babbel.com/en/magazine/easiest-languages-for-english-speakers-to-learn 

I love it! Yes, I'm a native speaker of English but I've found the North Germanic languages to be much easier to learn than Dutch or German, which are supposed to be more closely related to modern English. I think this has mostly do with, as you said, the grammar similarities between English and the North Germanic tongues. In Dutch and German, for example, I have to remember to keep the verb until the end of the sentence, or not end a sentence with a preposition, or to not split up the infinitive (like I just did), but none of this is so in Icelandic or Norwegian (the two Scandy languages I've studied).

Even more interesting to me is that Icelandic also retained the dental fricatives ð and þ (English 'th' sounds) while our "close" West Germanic cousins Dutch and German did not. Some linguists have gone so far as to say modern English is actually a North Germanic language rather than West: https://partner.sciencenorway.no/forskningno-history-language/english-is-a-scandinavian-language/1379829

Great aside, thank you. I could talk about languages all day, but I should probably not clutter up this thread any more than it already is.

1 hour ago, Tónskáld said:

I love it! Yes, I'm a native speaker of English but I've found the North Germanic languages to be much easier to learn than Dutch or German, which are supposed to be more closely related to modern English. I think this has mostly do with, as you said, the grammar similarities between English and the North Germanic tongues. In Dutch and German, for example, I have to remember to keep the verb until the end of the sentence, or not end a sentence with a preposition, or to not split up the infinitive (like I just did), but none of this is so in Icelandic or Norwegian (the two Scandy languages I've studied).

Even more interesting to me is that Icelandic also retained the dental fricatives ð and þ (English 'th' sounds) while our "close" West Germanic cousins Dutch and German did not. Some linguists have gone so far as to say modern English is actually a North Germanic language rather than West: https://partner.sciencenorway.no/forskningno-history-language/english-is-a-scandinavian-language/1379829

Great aside, thank you. I could talk about languages all day, but I should probably not clutter up this thread any more than it already is.

 

Deutsche Sprache, schwere Sprache.  

1 hour ago, caters said:

The only thing I like about Arnold Schoenberg is the way he describes compositional units built upon compositional units built upon compositional units, from the Motif to the singular phrase to the Period and Sentence to the Theme to the entire Sonata. His music, I don't care for, it's too modern, too atonal, too dissonant.

More like noise, right?

1 hour ago, caters said:

That no note is to be repeated until the whole sequence has finished - The whole idea behind serialism

Serialism is essentially the musical embodiment of the authoritarian egalitarianism found in all of modernity. 

It is essentially seeking to make all of the notes of equal importance.

7 hours ago, AngelCityOutlaw said:

Deutsche Sprache, schwere Sprache. 

@Tónskáld

I speak Dutch, German, English, Frisian and a local dialect of Lower-Saxon. I learnt Swedish for one year and was fluent because of these other languages. Norwegian I consider harder than Swedish though. It is much easier to study Swedish than Norwegian, because Swedish is even simpler in pronuniation and written style.
When listening to Old English I can understand everything, because Frisian also has many Norse influences.

When I was young and only spoke Dutch, I could communicate really well with Germans, Norwegians, English. However, Frisian was always a pain in the ass...

9 hours ago, AngelCityOutlaw said:

So then why should "art" made by humans that can also be made by monkeys (who cannot have ideas on art) be seen as having any value?

Does that not indicate that the person would also be absent-minded?

Because the intention of that work, I purposely do not call it art, is different: one is to share an idea, a concept with other humans. Art always has some (social) intention.
The superficial level of art, namely the work itself, can be made by monkeys. The combination of the physical work and the metaphysical idea cannot.
If you can inform me about investigations on monkeys making a work and having thought about why that work is the way it is, I confirm that monkeys can be creative artists too.

9 hours ago, AngelCityOutlaw said:

First, is that it seems to resemble artspeak. What exactly does it mean if a piece "moves"? What must it "bring about"? How do we know if a work has done this? 

It depends per individual. Most are emotionally moved / touched when confrontated with art. Sometimes that same person is not, which does not take away the title of art. In the end art is about emotions. Whether it is an outlet valve, inspirational, comforting, whatever. The idea that art must be beautiful goes against my idea on art.

7 hours ago, AngelCityOutlaw said:

More like noise, right?

Well, then Arnie composed damn good noise.

1 hour ago, Maarten Bauer said:

@Tónskáld

I speak Dutch, German, English, Frisian and a local dialect of Lower-Saxon. I learnt Swedish for one year and was fluent because of these other languages. Norwegian I consider harder than Swedish though. It is much easier to study Swedish than Norwegian, because Swedish is even simpler in pronuniation and written style.
When listening to Old English I can understand everything, because Frisian also has many Norse influences.

When I was young and only spoke Dutch, I could communicate really well with Germans, Norwegians, English. However, Frisian was always a pain in the donkey...

 

Nice. My great-oma could speak 8 languages  but I think if one can learn to speak Polish, they can learn to speak anything.

1 hour ago, Maarten Bauer said:

The superficial level of art, namely the work itself, can be made by monkeys.

See, the fundamental area where we're simply not going to agree is the idea that work itself is "superficial"

1 hour ago, Maarten Bauer said:

It depends per individual. Most are emotionally moved / touched when confrontated with art.

What about disgust? Disgust is very much an emotional response.

Jars of human poo, paintings with menstrual blood and a cross thrown in urine are disgusting to most normal people, but it counts as being emotionally moved. Just out of pure shock value.

Do you really feel that such criteria is enough to bestow a jar of human excrement with a title once reserved for the likes of the Sistine Chapel, the Mona Lisa, The Fifth Symphony, or Notre Dame?

Further, under this idea, it is possible for literally anything to be art. You actually have a Schrodinger's cat situation whereby something is only art if it is reacted to. Must the reaction be visible? How many reactions must it get, and from whom, before enough have been moved to say "this is art now"?

1 hour ago, Maarten Bauer said:

The idea that art must be beautiful goes against my idea on art.

I understand that, but your idea goes against all of our ancestors ideas on art.

How can we be sure that your idea is a better one, in light of that?

49 minutes ago, AngelCityOutlaw said:

What about disgust? Disgust is very much an emotional response.

Jars of human poo, paintings with menstrual blood and a cross thrown in urine are disgusting to most normal people, but it counts as being emotionally moved. Just out of pure shock value.

Do you really feel that such criteria is enough to bestow a jar of human excrement with a title once reserved for the likes of the Sistine Chapel, the Mona Lisa, The Fifth Symphony, or Notre Dame?

Further, under this idea, it is possible for literally anything to be art. You actually have a Schrodinger's cat situation whereby something is only art if it is reacted to. Must the reaction be visible? How many reactions must it get, and from whom, before enough have been moved to say "this is art now"?

This question of beauty is not a new one. In poetry and literature there are plenty of examples that can be defined as disgust. In music Monteverdi is a good example too of how music does not need to be beautiful to express.

Il Principe was met with disgust, yet it belongs to the canon of literature and I consider it art. Monteverdi's music was by some considered disgusting, trash, because it did not obey to the tradition enough.
What is problematic is that disgust and ugliness, nuda veritas have become the main focus of contemporary art. Beauty is simply less evident, because much contemporary art is not made anymore to be beautiful, because one is easily seen as conservative, traditionalist with negative meaning. It is time to face making beauty again.

 

56 minutes ago, AngelCityOutlaw said:

I understand that, but your idea goes against all of our ancestors ideas on art.

How can we be sure that your idea is a better one, in light of that?

No it does not go against it.
Art must express and move. That idea is just ancient.

21 hours ago, Tónskáld said:

It seems we have injected quite a few pregnant terms in this discussion, namely modernism, postmodernism, contemporary, and avant-garde. It also seems we each have slightly different definitions. For me:

Modernism is a broadly-encompassing idealogy that developed in the late 1800s and lasted for about a century, characterized by its reliance on reason and logic to expose truth.

Postmodernism is a broadly-encompassing idealogy that developed in the late 20th century. It is a reaction to modernism: that is, it seeks to establish that there is no such thing as absolute truth. Everything is relative.

Contemporary music merely means music that is created by artists living today.

Avant garde music is that which largely departs from the established norms of traditional music. (You know it when you hear it.)

 

Perhaps a sign that I shouldn't be on a composer forum, a charlatan perhaps, but these labels seem to serve two purposes;

- broad classifications to help music lovers out on an adventure to find new stuff (of a genre they like or a completely new one), like in olden times one went to a music shop and would know what browser to head for.

- to give a living to all the hangers-on and groupies of the music world something to talk about. Those other than composers, performers and accountants who have to make sure their halls or distribution outfits stay in profit.

My text book ranks people/jobs in descending importance to music:

Impresarios, agents

national broadcasters

recording companies

conductors

virtuosos

run-of-the-mill musicians

critics and historians

composers

although it 'secretly' admits that composers are really the most important. I suppose it says the rest are musical eunuchs with critics being the real cancer feeding off the host. 

A term like 'post-modern' has me looking at my bull-ometer - the needle usually flicking into the red near the end-stop when I see/hear it. From what's been said here it seems like an amorphous mass that probably reverts to ante-modernism times (whatever that is) perhaps to a mix of earlier styles. All styles available? The rest convey nothing except possibly 'classical' which I take to mean Haydn and Mozart and their clones. I compose. I'm fairly eclectic so I haven't a clue what label's attached to me. Apropos the opening post I doubt it adds anything to the culture except to historians, perhaps critics, the music having to find a following if it can. Great when it can be sold as a fashion.

8 hours ago, Maarten Bauer said:

@Tónskáld

I speak Dutch, German, English, Frisian and a local dialect of Lower-Saxon. I learnt Swedish for one year and was fluent because of these other languages. Norwegian I consider harder than Swedish though. It is much easier to study Swedish than Norwegian, because Swedish is even simpler in pronuniation and written style.
When listening to Old English I can understand everything, because Frisian also has many Norse influences.

When I was young and only spoke Dutch, I could communicate really well with Germans, Norwegians, English. However, Frisian was always a pain in the donkey...

That's something I love about Europeans: speaking several languages is a way of life. In my opinion, it's rather disadvantageous to have learned English as a first language (Americans, Aussies, Brits, Canadians, Kiwis—I'm talking about us), since its grammatical structure and vocabulary are so hybridized that it functions very poorly as a springboard to learning any other language. Plus, most of us who hail from an Anglo nation have little exposure to non-English speakers (Québec in Canada being a notable exception).

But I digress...

8 hours ago, AngelCityOutlaw said:

What about disgust? Disgust is very much an emotional response.

Jars of human poo, paintings with menstrual blood and a cross thrown in urine are disgusting to most normal people, but it counts as being emotionally moved. Just out of pure shock value.

Do you really feel that such criteria is enough to bestow a jar of human excrement with a title once reserved for the likes of the Sistine Chapel, the Mona Lisa, The Fifth Symphony, or Notre Dame?

Further, under this idea, it is possible for literally anything to be art. You actually have a Schrodinger's cat situation whereby something is only art if it is reacted to. Must the reaction be visible? How many reactions must it get, and from whom, before enough have been moved to say "this is art now"?

I think we all agree that the standards of art have changed, in that they've been removed altogether. I'm not sure that it really matters what any of us composers on this forum classify as art or non-art, good or disgusting, cacophonous or lyrical. Absolutely a painting with menstrual blood cannot objectively compare to the likes of such masterpieces as the Mona Lisa, but I'm afraid that's the point—there is no objectivity because our society does not value objectivity. Those of us who still value objectivity may argue with those who do not until we're blue in the face (or fingers), and to what end? We're not going to change someone's values. All we can do is try to understand them—and hopefully, with time, come to a point of mutual respect.

9 hours ago, Maarten Bauer said:

It depends per individual. Most are emotionally moved / touched when confrontated with art. Sometimes that same person is not, which does not take away the title of art. In the end art is about emotions. Whether it is an outlet valve, inspirational, comforting, whatever. The idea that art must be beautiful goes against my idea on art.

7 hours ago, Maarten Bauer said:

No it does not go against it.
Art must express and move. That idea is just ancient.

Yes, the idea that art must express and move is ancient. However, your position that this depends solely on the individual is rather solipsistic (in other words, the idea that objectivity does not exist outside of one's own knowledge or experience), and, therefore, modern. What you and AngelCityOutlaw are arguing here are the definitions of art as defined by your respective worldviews. Neither of you is being logically inconsistent. I find it quite informative to hear both of your positions, but I strongly doubt you're going to change each others' minds.

1 hour ago, Quinn said:

A term like 'post-modern' has me looking at my bull-ometer - the needle usually flicking into the red near the end-stop when I see/hear it. From what's been said here it seems like an amorphous mass that probably reverts to ante-modernism times (whatever that is) perhaps to a mix of earlier styles. All styles available? The rest convey nothing except possibly 'classical' which I take to mean Haydn and Mozart and their clones. I compose. I'm fairly eclectic so I haven't a clue what label's attached to me. Apropos the opening post I doubt it adds anything to the culture except to historians, perhaps critics, the music having to find a following if it can. Great when it can be sold as a fashion.

Quinn, you do crack me up. (Next time I'm in London, I think we should go for a cup of coffee, or perhaps a draught. I'm fairly certain we'd enjoy each other's company—or at least I yours.) As usual, your comments are dead-on, and humorously so. When all the stops are out, everything runs together. It's not a pretty sight but, then, it isn't supposed to be. I find it a bit insulting to think that my art, which I pour painstaking hours into perfecting, is at best just as acceptable as an unprepared assault on a piano decked out with coins, rubber bands, and doilies. It feels wrong, but that's because I value objectivity.

Time will tell where society's values end up. Like AngelCityOutlaw, I tend to think this is untenable in the long haul. I guess we'll just have to wait and see.

18 minutes ago, Tónskáld said:

That's something I love about Europeans: speaking several languages is a way of life. In my opinion, it's rather disadvantageous to have learned English as a first language (Americans, Aussies, Brits, Canadians, Kiwis—I'm talking about us), since its grammatical structure and vocabulary are so hybridized that it functions very poorly as a springboard to learning any other language. Plus, most of us who hail from an Anglo nation have little exposure to non-English speakers (Québec in Canada being a notable exception).

But I digress...

I am feeling really fortunate to be European / Dutch and having roots from Indonesia. The Dutch school system stimulates and allows for every pre-university student to study Dutch, English, German, French, Spanish, Italian, Chinese. Some go further to Swedish, Russian. All this for trade and international business. It is I believe one of the best systems for learning a European language. Dutch in itself can vary per 30km. I can tell if somebody is from Amsterdam, The Hague, Rotterdam, Utrecht and any other part. Fascinating at least. 

24 minutes ago, Tónskáld said:

Yes, the idea that art must express and move is ancient. However, your position that this depends solely on the individual is rather solipsistic (in other words, the idea that objectivity does not exist outside of one's own knowledge or experience), and, therefore, modern. What you and AngelCityOutlaw are arguing here are the definitions of art as defined by your respective worldviews. Neither of you is being logically inconsistent. I find it quite informative to hear both of your positions, but I strongly doubt you're going to change each others' minds.

2 hours ago, Quinn said:

 

Discussions do not need to result in a concensus. Often, discussions are much more valuable when discussing the topic itself rather than convincing or seeking for an agreement. 

In this case I am in fact not trying to convince anybody about my thoughts. I am showcasing and explaining them in the hope that others start thinking about them. Whether they take over and agree or go against and disagree on these things does not matter. It is the discussion that matters. 🙂

SUMMARY:

For those of you trying to follow along with this thread but hesitant to jump in with your opinions, I thought perhaps a summary post might encourage participation from those who haven't yet chimed in.

The original question was exploring the role of contemporary (modern) classical music in our society. By necessary extension, this has expanded to mean art in general.

At this point in the thread, the major theme appears to be that of modern vs. traditional standards of art. Traditionally, all artwork was held to a societal standard; if a piece didn't meet such standards, it was disregarded as subpar or ugly or shocking—in other words, as non-art. However, the modern view is that art has no objective standards—beauty is in the eye of the beholder—and any artwork that exemplifies this mindset is considered "good" or "acceptable" art. This has led, for example, to the classification of such pieces as menstrual blood paintings and jars of human excrement as actual works of art.

It isn't difficult to translate these effects into the realm of music. So, what does everyone think about avant garde music? Is it real music? Is it true artwork? And, ultimately, what is its role in society?

2 hours ago, Quinn said:

Perhaps a sign that I shouldn't be on a composer forum, a charlatan perhaps, but these labels seem to serve two purposes;

- broad classifications to help music lovers out on an adventure to find new stuff (of a genre they like or a completely new one), like in olden times one went to a music shop and would know what browser to head for.

- to give a living to all the hangers-on and groupies of the music world something to talk about. Those other than composers, performers and accountants who have to make sure their halls or distribution outfits stay in profit.

My text book ranks people/jobs in descending importance to music:

Impresarios, agents

national broadcasters

recording companies

conductors

virtuosos

run-of-the-mill musicians

critics and historians

composers

although it 'secretly' admits that composers are really the most important. I suppose it says the rest are musical eunuchs with critics being the real cancer feeding off the host. 

A term like 'post-modern' has me looking at my bull-ometer - the needle usually flicking into the red near the end-stop when I see/hear it. From what's been said here it seems like an amorphous mass that probably reverts to ante-modernism times (whatever that is) perhaps to a mix of earlier styles. All styles available? The rest convey nothing except possibly 'classical' which I take to mean Haydn and Mozart and their clones. I compose. I'm fairly eclectic so I haven't a clue what label's attached to me. Apropos the opening post I doubt it adds anything to the culture except to historians, perhaps critics, the music having to find a following if it can. Great when it can be sold as a fashion.

 

Humans like to categorize. Artists are pushed into boxes that they don't want to be in, but they are anyway against their will. Debussy rejected the label impressionistic, like Ravel. Style names often are a yoke for the artists put in the style box. 

3 hours ago, Maarten Bauer said:

Humans like to categorize. Artists are pushed into boxes that they don't want to be in, but they are anyway against their will. Debussy rejected the label impressionistic, like Ravel. Style names often are a yoke for the artists put in the style box. 

 

 

 

This is true and the labels have purposes such as I suggested. They can help a public having a broad range of experience of the art but, as you say, rarely amuse the creators of the art. Any art form tended to develop upon tradition, evolve perhaps, until the turn of the 20th century when the old order was binned and attempts were made to lay new foundations. Unfortunately most artists/composers failed to realise that their wares are media for communication. If the recipient, the viewer or listener has no knowledge of the symbols being used then no communication can occur, like listening to or trying to read an unfamiliar language. Cage was right in declaring that people must just listen without expectation (or view). Fine, but unless the listener/viewer is accomplished at that, takes pleasure from it, it won't work. Traditional audiences are happier when art gives them some kind of pleasure, awakens emotions, moods, etc., that depends on several factors, predominantly their experience with conventions. 

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