Saturday, February 1, 2020

Time to State the Obvious

As George Orwell said in 1939, reviewing a book by Bertrand Russell:
we have now sunk to a depth at which the restatement of the obvious is the first duty of intelligent men.
So here we go:

  • Despite all the fuss over the minimalists, the Baltic composers, the Eastern European composers and the currently fashionable composers writing the soundtrack to climate change, it seems obvious that the two people who had the deepest influence on 20th century music were Schoenberg and Stravinsky. This was obvious forty years ago and it should be even more obvious now.
  • You really can't make aesthetic choices based on quotas of minority and "oppressed" groups. Well, sure, you can, but you have to acknowledge that it is no longer an aesthetic choice.
  • Determining the truth of something is as important now as it ever was. To do so you have to examine the relevant evidence with as little bias as possible. If you are not disinterested, in the original sense of the word, then you will have the tendency to fall into "special pleading." This has to be avoided if you want to get to the truth. And no, there is no higher priority.
  • The "canon" of classical music, that is, the catalogue of the most worthwhile, the most significant works, is never fixed, but is constantly changing. And it is not changing because of some patriarchal hegemony. It is changing because of the multifarious aesthetic choices of composers (who choose their influences), conductors and performers (who choose works that they think will make the best aesthetic impact) and audiences (who choose what they most want to listen to). When I was a young musician, almost no-one thought very highly of Shostakovich. Now he is a front-rank composer.
  • As the technology of music production grows ever more sophisticated, the skills necessary to create musical performances are fewer and fewer. Compare, for example, the musical competence of, say, Billie Eilish with that of pop artists of a generation ago, who had to learn performance skills on various musical instruments as well as vocal skills. Compare that, in turn to the skills necessary to be a classical performer on piano or violin.
  • Isn't the danger of a pandemic such as the coronavirus far greater than that of climate change? And yet, where is all the attention and government funding directed?
  • We seem to rate material wealth at the top of our scale of values. But when we take a vacation somewhere we always seem to seek out places rich in non-material values: art museums, music festivals, historic architecture, traditional festivities and ceremonies, exotic locales, bucolic countrysides, oceans and beaches, remote wildernesses and so on.
Feel free to add some of your own in the comments.

Our envoi is the slightly less well-known Symphony No. 6 by Shostakovich with Leonard Bernstein conducting the Vienna Philharmonic:


21 comments:

Maury said...

No argument from me that for the 20th C Schoenberg and Stravinsky dominate almost everything other than non serial electronic music. Debussy was very important but his direct influence has been more on Hollywood scores and arrangers.

Currently though I would say only Stravinsky has some influence, mainly along the lines of performance preference, as Taruskin maintains.

In fact I am hard pressed to identify any composer that has a dominant musical influence now, even though we are 1/5th of the way through the 21st C. ProTools is certainly the most significant musical influencer of pop music but classical music is not quite there yet.

Bryan Townsend said...

You raise a really important question that I haven't really considered: who is the most influential composer for the 21st century? As the question is so topical I'm not sure I can answer for anyone but myself. I have had a mixture of influences in my own life as a composer. Debussy was an important early one, mainly for his elegance and color. Schoenberg is another, but mainly for his intellectual rigor. Stravinsky is one, on a more practical level. I admire Shostakovich for his intense emotional focus. I had a long-standing admiration for Steve Reich, but ultimately had to excise any influence on my own music. Who is influencing young composers? Whoever it is, they are likely reluctant to say. Probably John Luther Adams and Philip Glass. That would be my guess. Thomas Adès? Arvo Pärt?

Ben said...

You have to go back more than a generation to find popular music acts who "had to learn performance skills on various musical instruments as well as vocal skills." The top artist 25 years ago was TLC. As far as I know, they did not and could not play a single musical instruments, much less "various" ones. They could sing and write the bare bones of a song that would be doctored by a highly-paid studio producer and engineers. In that respect, the only difference between them and Billie Eilish is that the better and cheaper technology enabled Eilish to make an album in her house with her brother (a highly-paid producer and engineer) instead of in a rented studio.

Mediocrity in instrumental performance in pop music seems to be the rule rather than the exception no matter how many generations one goes into pop music. (I love Buddy Holly, but he didn't exactly master the guitar.) It has less to do with technology, I think, and more to do with what the music demands. Compared to classical music, pop music is simple, repetitive, and rudimentary. That's it's charm.

Bryan Townsend said...

You are right, Ben! I tend to ignore pop music that doesn't interest me much, so I don't take into account groups like TLC. I guess their skills were more in the area of dance and presentation. Milli Vanilli!

Yes, the charm of current pop is its repetitive simplicity, I guess. It wears thin pretty quickly for me. What distinguishes Billie Eilish from a thousand others recording in their bedrooms? Personality?

Wenatchee the Hatchet said...

I've been wondering whether we've arrived at an era in which, absent a "mainstream" (a situation proposed by Leonard B. Meyer a bit more than fifty years ago in Music, the Arts and Ideas) we don't have anyone who can embody whatever the mainstream of the performance arts has because we've been in a polystylistic steady state. Meyer proposed that in such a musical and cultural climate traditionalists and would-be radicals will not necessarily define the norms as much as formalists who experiment across and assimilate elements of styles.

To translate Meyer's point in terms of pop music and classical music, without a mainstream style defining things the formalists who grab a little from everywhere like The Beatles or David Bowie can define a kind of pop formalism while the eclecticism of an Alfred Schnittke or a George Rochberg or a Berio might define a parallel path in "classical music", or Penderecki or Lutoslawski or Ligeti.
I've played with the idea that we're in a kind of neo-Baroque era in which multiple styles and practices co-exist as the old style and new style existed in the era of figured bass. Jazz can be thought of as the evolution of a new style that revived elements that appeared in older styles, a kind of "figured treble" in contrast to the "figured bass" of the Baroque era--we get chord charts and the head tune but chord substitutions are encouraged and even the tune can be modified.

Richard Taruskin has highlighted the gap between the academic canon and the repertoire canon, perhaps best summed up by invoking Elliot Carter vs Rachmaninoff, but there's been a gap between classical and pop that seems more entrenched now than it was a century ago. Bubber Miley quoting Chopin's funeral march from the B flat minor piano sonata springs easily to mind. Ellington reworking the Nutcracker Suite comes to mind. Ray Charles playing country songs and Stevie Wonder recording Schubert's Ave Maria come to mind. It's thanks to Wonder that "Tears of a Clown" has that bassoon solo in it.

My sense, as I've been trying to articulate it, is that we're in a period of flux in which a pattern that comes up with musicians whom musicians respect (who may not get journalistic acclaim) is a willingness and ability to draw on a wide range of influences and find (or bring) an inner cohesion that may not be apparent on the surface details of the styles invoked.

Maury said...

RE Bryan and the Hatchet on current composers' influencers.

I don't think the minimalists or new? retro? religious composers influence other composers much in 2020. The minimalist vogue I think has peaked and it is hard to use it without merely copying it.

I think the Hatchet's last paragraph above is correct. Given the widespread availability of almost all music from folk and chant onward it we have a situation very different from past generations who either followed their teachers' traditions or rebelled against some aspect of it.

My guess is that the new classical music will evolve somehow out of pop music. There have been some mild attempts in the past with the prog groups of the 70s and some of the electronica artists of the 80s. The early Subotnick LPs seemed to have some vague pop influences themselves. Perhaps there will no longer be authoritative masters within an established tradition but just artists who create more or less convincing syntheses of elements that others don't or can't follow.

Maury said...

The Hatchet:Mediocrity in instrumental performance in pop music seems to be the rule rather than the exception no matter how many generations one goes into pop music.

I believe there is a significant distinction to be made between instrumental technique and creativity. In prior generations pop musicians with average at best technical skills nevertheless could contribute creatively to a song. Conversely some with great technique had low creativity. Not all creativity requires great technique to accomplish. I can't speak for Bryan but that would be consistent with his point I think. The current ProTools era though does not seem to allow much space for that kind of creativity.

Wenatchee the Hatchet said...

Writing as a Hindemith fan I would venture to suggest the problem isn't necessarily technique in itself but that technique can lead to specialization. I.e we can read about how violinists might play 1st or 2nd depending on the ensemble needs of a performance or for variety's sake, or how violists often started on the violin. In the string music traditions shifting across instruments is common, as is a custom for singers to switch around between baritone and tenor II or even tenor I parts depending on the exigencies of a performance. Despite the often lower level of technical achievement what pop musicians and bedroom/garage band musicians retain that can often vanish in classical contexts is an interest in multi-instrumental multi-disciplinarity. A Paul McCartney or a Stevie Wonder won't be virtuosic on every instrument but they can play well enough to play all the instruments on a track they have recorded not entirely dissimilar to how after 1933 there wasn't a symphonic score Paul Hindemith composed where he couldn't play every single part himself regardless of which instrument in the orchestral score you chose to look at.

But on the whole in the last century I would venture to say that the gap between instrumental music as an autonomous branch of the concert music traditions and popular song have veered much father away from each other than they may have ever been in previous eras of Western music. The era of ProTools will aid and abet such creativity provided the musicians have enough musical and technical literacy to work with the tools available.

Bryan Townsend said...

Towards the end of my fairly brief career as a rock musician, I recorded some songs I had written. I invited a drummer to back me up and another friend on organ. But I wrote the songs, played rhythm guitar, played lead guitar, played bass guitar and sang. Soon after, when I switched to classical guitar, I gave up trying to play any other instrument and focused solely on the one.

I haven't used Pro Tools and have only briefly fooled around with GarageBand, but it seems to me that the first thing you have to do, creatively, is defeat the defaults! By that I mean you have to figure out how NOT to be influenced by however the programs are set up. In other words they are so helpful that that lead you to do what everyone else is doing. Or am I wrong?

Anonymous said...

Further to your point, Bryan, that I've found in recent years it is important for me to UNlearn certain things. Rejecting popular ideas and methods is a way for the creative person to wipe the slate clean, while still retaining the influences that have been subconsciously acquired. Being willing to reject what may stand in the way of a singular vision may lead to a more truthful work. And as Mark Twain said, "When you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect."

Will Wilkin said...

Bryan, I'm surprised at your suggestions that climate change is not a serious problem. Perhaps in a relatively uncrowded and freshwater-abundant and northern latitude country such as Canada, you feel relatively safe from the changes it will bring to marine and terrestrial ecosystems, including the food chain of fisheries and agriculture on which civilization depends. I know we're both too busy to delve into the science here, much of which, unfortunately, is written very badly and inaccessibly for we laymen. But I am convinced that human-caused climate change can become an existential threat to civilization as we know it, and to a huge portion of the earth's species, unless we decarbonize our economy very quickly.

Maury said...

Bryan: Think of ProTools as the audio version of Photoshop. In the old days, even if a song was repetitive, musicians had to play each repeated refrain fresh. Now you can simply loop a refrain or riff or passage through the digital sequencer. But you can essentially edit and modify each note separately on a track too. Given sampling libraries very few new instrumental notes need to be entered through MIDI into ProTools to create a song accompaniment. So even if you turn off the defaults it doesn't stop the use of these features tending to uniformity and short duration musical thought. But through editing and sequencing a fairly complex structure can be built up with various arrangements and superpositions of brief audio passages.

The Hatchet: Yes I agree with your statement. But the specific point I was making can perhaps be best described by an anecdote. The rock group Love was recording their now acclaimed LP Forever Changes. While doing so the band members were having all kinds of drug and psych problems and couldn't function well in the studio. In frustration the producer decided to bring in highly regarded LA session musicians to play several draft songs based on Love demos. The session players reeled off several songs expertly and went home. The producer played the tracks to A&R. A&R sadly had to admit that while the playing was fine it somehow didn't sound as fresh and dynamic as the tracks played less expertly by Love. Their relative lack of skill forced them into certain unorthodoxies which enlivened the arrangement. For Love those songs were their babies while for the session players they were someone else's kids. So the producer had to go back and struggle with the group to finally complete the album.

Bryan Townsend said...

Anonymous: Very good point. I like Jordan Peterson's metaphor that artists are those who leave the campfire and go out into the outer darkness to see if they can bring back something new/useful. In order to do this, you have to leave the campfire, i.e. the familiar contexts and devices, behind. It is fascinating to read how Stravinsky worked, often ruthlessly eliminating everything he could that was conventional.

Will: for a bit there I thought I snuck that one over the plate unnoticed! I am, I confess, a climate crisis skeptic. But as you say, this is not the place to get into the scientific details. One thing that makes me skeptical is whenever you assemble a list of predictions as to climate you find that, over the last fifty years, not one of the fearsome scenarios has come true.

Maury: Sometimes I have to go back to a pencil and a blank sheet of paper to sketch out some ideas that simply will not fit into any music or notation program. And of course, the last thing I want is a library of loops and samples! A session musician can certainly deliver a professional performance. But with pop music, I think what you want is a more emotionally authentic performance--whatever that is!

Maury said...

"It is fascinating to read how Stravinsky worked, often ruthlessly eliminating everything he could that was conventional."

This is a very important point. There will be lots of unnoticed conventionality in any art work, but if you don't even eliminate the most obvious such formulae then you are creating conventional generic art however pleasant. I was reminded of this listening to the works listed in your Grammy Awards post. Most had some interesting passages but you only had to wait a few minutes before some hackneyed passage followed. The composer seemed to have the most problem with louder passages for some reason. They were all quite poor. I was however reasonably impressed with the mostly idiomatic writing for the solo violin. It wasn't great music but at least it wasn't stilted.

"But with pop music, I think what you want is a more emotionally authentic performance--whatever that is!"

This is probably a very good discussion item for a separate post. What constitutes a good pop music performance (of formulaic music) and how do we recognize it?

Will Wilkin said...

Regarding elimination of conventions in order to create original music, just 2 nights ago I heard a concert where one of the compositions must have aimed for exactly that. The a capella choral group Roomful of Teeth performed a new piece called "Psychedelia" that included various guttural and growling and other unconventional vocal sounds. I found the piece lacking both in the immediate moment-to-moment aesthetics and in the larger (missing) architecture that would give a composition genuine coherence as a single piece (it was, to me, more a collage of novel moments, all expertly performed but unsatisfying to my ears and mind. Other pieces were better. The other ensemble in the program was the Dublin Guitar Quartet, Bryan you would have been impressed, at least I sure was. Most or all of their set was of arrangements (by one of the quartet) of contemporary works, most notable for me was a Philip Glass string quartet arranged for 4 guitars. Very cool also was this as my first time ever seeing 8-string guitars (2 of the 4 guitarists played 8-stringers). For the 2nd half of the set, the 2 ensembles played a large work together, setting poetry of 19th century women on the American prairie.

Regarding climate models, you might find this article interesting:

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/climate-models-got-it-right-on-global-warming/

Bryan Townsend said...

I never know what post is going to ignite a discussion! I didn't anticipate that this one would. Yes, Maury, we have some good material here for future posts.

It is always a risk to eliminate the conventional sinews that have traditionally held pieces together. Obviously you have to replace them with something otherwise you end up with experimental incoherence! Eliminating the conventional is no guarantee of coming up with a good piece.

Will, I would have loved to have heard that concert. What piece did they do together? Oh yes, I know that most platforms, including Scientific American, have signed up for the crusade. It would be interesting to look at the data--which they do not link to! For the skeptical side of the coin, have a look at this site: https://wattsupwiththat.com/

Maury said...

This is the first and last comment I will make about "climate change" which to me is simply an empirical question yet to be understood. Art and sports are the domains where people can indulge their wishful thinking, fantasies, and emotional attachments without risk or penalty. Science and politics among other areas are not appropriate vehicles for any of that. In fact science depends on perpetual skepticism while politics should always be viewed in life or death terms clear-eyed since you are giving people that power.

So I have no problem with a composer writing the Climate Change Symphony or the Peace Love and Understanding Concerto or the Traditional Religion String Quartet. I also have no problem with any of the antics with sports fans or team names etc etc.

However when we see a conflation of art, science and sports with politics then we should be concerned. There is a term for the linking of science with political movements called Lysenkoism after its most rigorous promoter Trofim Lysenko. It is worth reading his biography. In past generations, scientists themselves slapped down politicians attempting to attach themselves and promote particular science research. That independence has disappeared with the vast increase in government/institutional research grants.The same is also true with the non popular arts. Thus without real independence science risks being compromised so that no one trusts it to be a truthful purveyor of data.

Bryan Townsend said...

Maury, you have captured many of my misgivings, but more articulately! Thanks. Just as you say, both the fine arts and science suffer when they become the vehicles for political projects of whatever variety.

Dex Quire said...

This has got to be one of the most interesting conversations on the internet: Stravinsky and climate change ... fossil fuels have liberated mankind ... how can you argue with that ...? Oil coats our daily life. The polymers in an iPhone are so closely packed that if you set one on a stack of paperbacks that are not level, the phone will slowly glide off and crash to the floor. The paint and finish on your grand piano. The shine of your classical guitar. I am thankful I live in a fossil fuel age. Travel to Paris or Machu Pichu. We will come up with something better, less dirty, I am sure, but until we do, shine on.

Of course Stravinsky lit the 20th modernist fuse; the fragmentation was great too. I like Villa Lobos, though every composer, conductor, academic I have talked to about him has said, "He's too self-indulgent." A while back, I purchased a CD 4 pack of VL conducting himself with the Radio Symphony of France (or something). Astonishing waves of music. I wouldn't know where to begin to begin to describe it. Like saying, describe Brazil in ten words or less. I see I'm sliding off topic like a slowly sliding iPhone atop a phone book. More later...

Bryan Townsend said...

Keep looking around--I'm sure you will find more interesting conversations. And thanks for your thoughts which we greet with delight. Welcome to the Music Salon family!

Dex Quire said...

Maury's comments here on science and the arts are very well stated.