Classical Convert

Webernification (or: Me vs. Atonality, Part 10,243)

After reading the section in The Rest Is Noise about Webern I was immediately inspired to grab a copy of the 6 Pieces, despite my current dislike of truly atonal pieces. What grabbed me so much from the pages?

“It is an incomparably disturbing work in which the rawness of atonality is refracted through the utmost orchestral finesse … arguably the supreme atonal work”

Man I love ellipses. And how could one not love to sample the opus after that knife-edge of a summary? Happily, pinched pensioners wireless access down here in the South, in combination with my not-canceled eMusic subscription results in instant musical gratification. The 6 Pieces are just a few clicks, taps and shufflings around the room to optimize stolen borrowed signal strength away.

So how do they strike an atonal unfan? Well, after only almost a couple of listens (initial impressions here, currently) I feel a stronger connection than with either Berg’s Violin Concerto, or Schoenberg’s Variations for Orchestra or Serenade. This is surprising to me, as previously my misconception was that Webern was going to be ultra-astringent, like each of his opuses would be one viciously plucked tone-row with a 10-note chord thrown in at the end for discordantly good measure.

I’m finding quite hard to identify why this is. They are certainly murkier than I had imagined, they sound sometimes plaintive, lost. Often  scary. Shimmering notes lying over wandering ostinato depths. Basically I’m a sucker for melancholic music, hence the Shostakovich lust. There’s more though, what? They are almost… not tonal exactly… but less abrasively atonal than the Schoenberg, and more depressively atonal. There is something about the tempos, also. I feel like with other atonal pieces the speeds are scattered around as much as the notes are, in a deliberate, unemotional fashion, as if the composer is trying to use each speed equally just as he uses each note. Here, however, the variation feels more emotionally driven.

More listening is required to get thoughts somewhat straighter on these areas. What really puzzles me is why these seem to make more sense to me than the “emotional atonality” of the Berg Violin Concerto. Doesn’t that fit the description above even better than Webern?

PS dear reader, one more quick thought before I pretend to go to bed: I like the vague, muttering percussion/percussive background he sometimes uses.

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.

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!