On 30 Jan 2005 at 23:20, Dennis Bathory-Kitsz wrote: > Omigawd, there's a giant leap between Dvorak and Stockhausen! And this > crawling thing has always troubled me. Nobody has to crawl through old > films to get to new films, old books to get to new books, old jazz to > get to new jazz, old dance to get to new dance, old plays to get to > new plays, old paintings to get to new paintings. The only artistic > field that has proselytized the crawling theory for the past century > has been classical nonpop. But I think you know my p.o.v. as we're > arguing about it over on O-list right now. :)
Your analogy points out *why* new music has problems: they lost their audience. The conventions of film are taught to everyone who watches TV, so someone who'd never seen a single film (but who grew up on TV programs) would have no difficulties understanding the conventions of modern file precisely because they've already been tacitly trained in them. Certain kinds of "modern" music have received the same benefit, because non-tonal music has been used for a long time in film, and people respond to it. It's why Stravinsky's "Rite" is no longer problematic for the ear of your ordinary consumer. But a lot of new music that I encounter is incomprehensible to me on first hearing. I don't say that to say it's incomprehensible music or that there's something wrong with it. It's just to say that I don't have the preparation to be able to absorb the music on first hearing. I don't know how to choose between chicken and egg here. Personally, I feel that composers would be better off writing music that people are more able to comprehend on first hearing than in assuming that people can just listen to the piece 10 times, until they begin to comprehend it. Obviously, both things have to happen -- even in the 1820s, an Italian music lover returned to the publisher an edition of Mozart's "Dissonant Quartet" because the music lover looked at the first few measures and declared it filled with numerous engraving errors. So, these things take time, yes. But we must recognize that the 1820s Italian music lover was definitely in the minority at the time, showing a very conservative ear. In our times there's been a complete disconnect between composers and audiences that wasn't caused by the content of the music being written so much as by political stances that hardened before the music was given a chance to be heard. That is, they closed their ears before giving the music a chance. Nonetheless, there was a time in the mid-century when many composers, in my opinion, went wildly off track and abandoned even their willing potential audiences. That has not been the case for an extremely long time (at least 30 years now), but the audience for serious music in the US (at least) has not returned. Other audiences may be coming to the music, but the natural audience for serious music retains (especially including conservatory-trained performers) a certain degree of hostility to new music. I'm not placing blame here -- indeed, I believe there's plenty to go around, about equally between composers, critics, performers and audiences. I'm just observing what seems to me to be a fact of modern musical life. And in the context of the aging audiences for traditional serious music, I don't know what future there is for serious music at all, especially when composers like Dennis express such hostility to performers. Each summer I work coaching young musicians and it seems to me that very few of them are getting much in the way of real training in making music. Indeed, I despair over the fact that most of them seem to not even be all that excited about what they are doing in the first place. Maybe we are in the twilight of our art form. I really don't know. -- David W. Fenton http://www.bway.net/~dfenton David Fenton Associates http://www.bway.net/~dfassoc _______________________________________________ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
