Classical Convert

Me vs. Atonalism, again

Okay… people seem very convinced of convincing me that there are rich and fertile sonic grounds to be discovered in the land of atonality. For a bit of a recap we have: firstly, me claiming that strict twelve-tone atonalism is too much and too academic. Secondly, me defending myself a bit from the criticisms of (a) being overly dismissive about the genre, and (b) insisting that late Shostakovich really does use tone rows.

So what do we have this time around? Well, wishniak says:

As with anything challenging, one might have to invest some time in it, get used to some new aesthetic values…

And Chris Culver says:

It’s odd to pitch standard repertoire classical music as good for nerds since it’s fun to figure out how it works, while at the same time deploring modernism as too “academic”.

Both are making the point that I’m not necessarily giving the serialists a fair go of it, which, since this site is all about trying to get people to listen to a genre they have negative preconceptions about, is a bit hypocritical. I kinda have to agree – a bit reluctantly – although in my defense it’s not as if I haven’t tried it.

In fact, JF brought up the Berg Violin Concerto, which I am actually quite partial to (and I’d also quite like to see Wozzeck). I think it’s a striking piece, especially when you know the full, morbid, background (a memorial to the young death of Manon Gropius, and also Berg’s final work). However, I think the reason it is so striking (and also why it is popular amongst people who do not in general care for atonalism) is that it inextricably linked to the tonal system. Berg’s tone-row is a tonal tone-row: g-minor, d-major, a-minor, e-major, Es ist genug. This is what I’m getting at when I claim that atonality is only truly satisfying when balanced against tonality.

JF comments that:

What you’re really talking about, I think, is not atonality but degrees of dissonance in the harmony, one “degree” being how long the dissonance lasts, and note-sequences you can or can’t recognize as melodic shapes.

Which I sort of agree with. I’ll write more about this another time. the thing that bugs me about serialism is the forced nature of it, the insistence that you have to give every note equal importance. While Berg’s violin concerto pulls this off while still being emotionally touching, I think it’s because he pushed the overly strict twelve-tone system almost into tonality. What I like about late Shostakovich is similar – he’ll take a twelve-tone melody, which is bloody hard to hear as a melody the first ten times you listen to it – and then develop it without the restrictions of the twelve-tone system.

I like difficult melodies, I like working on a piece before I understand it, but serialism seems scarily restrictive. Rob Schottland agreed:

Personally, I feel that the serial/twelve-tone movement of the 20th century was too limiting a format to survive in its strictest form.

I think I concur. But, I’m willing to give it another ago – I just ordered a CD from Amazon featuring Schoenberg’s Variations for Orchestra, recommended to me in a previous post. I’ll let you know how the listening goes.

PS – This is a great radio broadcast about the Berg violin concerto.

What Should “Classical” Music Be Called?

Several recent comments I have read have made me rethink for about the fiftieth time about what a horrible, horrible term “classical” music is for describing the genre I listen to. It’s an inappropriate term to use when talking with pretty much anyone. It reminds me of this post by Alex Ross in which he is complaining about the same problem.

To those unfamiliar with the genre, “classical” is associated with the same old pieces everyone has heard about a billion times over: Eine Kleine Nachtmusik, Pachelbel’s Canon, etc. If I tell someone who is not a fan that I’m into “classical music”, with about 95.3% certainty these pieces are what they think I’m referring to. They’ll be like “Oh, errr, great” and quietly change the subject.

On the other hand, for people who are incredibly into the music “classical” is also a completely useless genre-wide term. With that degree of experience you know that it actually refers to a compositional period in the last 50 years or so of the 1700′s, which is basically just Mozart and Haydn (yeah I know, there are probably tons of other worthy, truly classical, composers…)

So at either end of the familiarity spectrum it’s a heavy-handed and confusing term. Unfortunately, using anything else seems even more confusing. Alex likes “notated music”, but if I use that term, almost nobody has any idea what kind of stuff I am talking about. Although “classical” conjures up somewhat unfortunate conceptions, at least it conjures up *something*.

Perhaps I should just start listing composers by name next time someone asks, starting with the ones that aren’t Beethoven or Mozart. Does anybody have any better labels for the genre? Something accessible and interesting sounding, but actually identifiable?

Ahh, who am I kidding. In 1000 years people will probably still be calling it classical, and still be bitching about the nomenclature.

Me vs. Atonalism

A post I wrote a few days ago has generated way more controversy than I though it would. The general gist of it is that I was dismissing the second Viennese school as being way over the top. I suggested that the future of classical music is the use of atonality as a contrasting key: instead of writing a piece in, say, c-major and modulating between that and c-minor (or a-minor), a piece will switch between tonality and atonality in a similar fashion, but not stick in the land of atonality.

In short, I feel that atonality in music should be a fleeting thing, because tonality speaks to something deep inside us. It is satisfactory on a fundamental level, as opposed to atonality, which is only satisfactory in an academic sense.

However, several people have expressed strong disagreement. Chris Culver says:

“If atonality isn’t your thing, fine. But it’s ridiculous for you to make universal pronouncements like “it sucks”, or that no one can understand it without the score (plenty of people can)”

I agree that maybe I was a tad harsh in my initial criticism, but I still feel that my point is basically true (for me at least, I understand that people are going to constantly disagree about music). However, I am certainly willing to accept that the tonal/atonal blend I was evangelizing would probably not have come about, if not for the dramatic steps of Berg, Webern and Schoenberg.

Matt commented that:

“I’m not sure that you really have a handle on what you’re talking about here. You’re conflating categories of music (”atonal”, “serial”, “twelve-tone”) which are actually subsets of one another … The melodies in late Shostakovich are tonal.”

And then goes on to suggest six pieces I am completely unfamiliar with to better appreciate what the atonalists brought to the table – which I shall definitely work on acquiring. However, I strongly disagree with his latter statement that late Shostakovich is tonal. The principal themes in, say, the Violin Sonata (Op. 134) and the twelfth String Quartet (Op. 126) are tone rows, but he develops these as if they were tonal themes. That’s what I mean by developing atonal ideas in a tonal fashion.

As for atonal vs. serial vs. twelve-tone, I appreciate that the distinction is subtle, and kind of back-and-forth. As I understand it, atonalism (which really just means the absence of tonal center, which could almost apply to (some of) Debussy as well as Schoenberg) encompasses serialism (the strict use of twelve tone rows, each note in the scale used just as much as any other, in a specific order) which is almost the same as twelve-tone music (which might refer to less strict use of each note to an equal degree)

But, I’m fully prepared to be not quite correct about this… I’d be delighted to hear what you think. Comment below!

A UK Version of the Joshua Bell Experiment

Courtesy of Sonic Granades I discovered that the Independent, a British newspaper, did their own version of the Joshua Bell experiment. For the uninitiated, the general idea is to send some ultra-famous musician out into the wilds of a city to go busking. After they play for 45 minutes we observe how many people actually stopped to listen, find out it’s about 0%, and despair at the state of the world. This time it’s with the violinist Tasmin Little.

Well… this one has a bit more of a positive attitude about it, even if the total cash received and number of heads turned were comparable. Interestingly, it’s the young people who actually stopped and stopped and chucked cash in the receptacle, not the older audience who “were of the same demographic group that flocked to hear her play a concerto at a sold-out Queen Elizabeth Hall just two months ago”. Isn’t that cool? There’s hope for us younguns yet!

What I like about this compared to the original, is that they actively acknowledge the fact that performing on the commuter trail, with people rushing past to get places, isn’t going to result in the most receptive audience. It’s not the most ideal choice of location:

“The ground is amply layered with pigeon shit, blankets belonging to the homeless lie scrunched in a corner, and no doubt the place is used as an impromptu loo by Friday night binge-drinkers.”

They emphasise the glimmers that the performance gathers, the kid who tugs against her determined mother to stay and listen, the people who shyly hang around out of the direct orbit of Little (aren’t we English fantastically awkward?), the tourist who pretends to conduct along with the performance. Little also seems a lot more sporting: switching into a rendition of Happy Birthday for a kid whose intrigue leads her right up to center-stage, and demanding “Give us a copper!” to a group of ogling construction workers. In short, she seems way more comfortable and aware of the rules of her milieu than Joshua did.

Basically, this version of the experiment is far more prepared to accept the fact that people are not going to stop for world-class music if they are focused on other, more pressing, more immediate things. The appreciation of great music and rushing to get to work on time aren’t really compatible. Perhaps that’s why the children, with nowhere to rush off to and no timetable to keep, were some of the most enthusiastic listeners.

7 Reasons Nerds Should Listen to Classical Music

I have a sort of grandish dream, which is, that all of this wonderful communication potential the internet gives us will lead to an upswing in the popularity of classical music, due to what I think is an incredibly ripe – but untapped – audience.

This sleeping crowd of not-quite-yet classical music enthusiasts is the staggeringly huge population of educated, technology-obsessed young people (as the lingo goes, I guess) who push the bleeding edge of the online world: the nerd.

We’re (yes we, as a physics grad student I’m way, way up there on the nerd scale) the perfect new audience. Here’s why:

1. We love discovering and understanding how things are put together. Classical music is a perfect genre for this – each piece is written in one of many basically standardized forms, sonata form, trios, rondos, theme and variations, and so on. However, these forms are stretched and contorted and copied and pasted into very different beasts by each composer. Understanding what they’ve done and why is, well, a lot of fun.
2. We like classifying stuff. Kind of related to the first point this, but it goes way further than just the particular form a movement is in. Each piece can be a sonata, or symphony, or concerto, or oratorio, or something else entirely. Each composer’s output is indexed with opus numbers (or something else if they’re extra special) and each piece has it’s own home key. Understanding what all this really meant and referred to was a huge part of the experience for me.
3. We love hearing new music. One of the reasons that online music sharing has taken off to such a magnificent extent is the innate attraction we seem to have to music. On pretty much any web-forum you’ll find dozens of threads devoted to people trying to find new music recommendations based on their current tastes, and hundreds of responses to those requests from people eager to spread their favorite groups to others. We are very open to hearing new pieces.
4. We love intellectual stimulation. Nerds are the kind of people who will do math for fun, because it’s intellectually satisfying. This is an area in which classical music kicks arse, compared to most popular stuff. A symphony is a story. You can listen to it as background music (which is probably what most non-classical people do when they hear classical) or you can try and follow it’s themes and motivation all the way through. While this is blindingly hard at first it’s amazingly satisfying after you listen to a piece ten times and suddenly it jumps out at you. It’s a very similar feeling to when you finally get a physics or math proof.
5. We already have some exposure to classical. I often see posts on classical boards in which people will refer to music which thy really like from the soundtrack of a computer game. Symphonic scores are also very prevalent in films disproportionately popular in the online world, such as the Lord of the Rings trilogy, all of which are sneakily leading people toward the world of classical music.
6. We like having long and detailed discussions/arguments about stuff. Particularly when there is adequate potential to show off knowledge about arcane topics. Classical music is hugely fertile ground for this. We can argue about whether Beethoven’s Op.130 string quartet is better with or without the Grosse Fugue as the last movement, or why on earth there are all those enigmatic Wagner quotes at the end of Shostakovich’s 15th symphony, or… well, you get the idea.
7. We like open source stuff. You can walk into a music library and pull out a full orchestral copy of any of Beethoven’s (or anyone elses) symphonies. You can follow along while listening and discover all kinds of subtleties in the piece, or you can write your own software to analyze it or synthesize it. Anyone can put on a performance of a piece, and sell it, without fear of getting their asses sued off. In fact, one of the most satisfying things about classical music is being able to hear many different interpretations of a piece.

That’s all I can think of right now (especially since my supervisor is sitting just opposite at me and I need to get back into the optics room before she asks what I’m doing…) but I bet there are others. I’d love to hear more suggestions.