Відео

I don't see a problem, if these composers like what they do, they should do so. Art is free and should not be measured in terms of right or wrong.

I once took my wife years ago to the Univ. of Maryland to hear a concert. It included Heinrich Ignaz Franz Biber`s piece for seven trumpets (I love 17th century music) and Messiaen`s Quartet for the End of Time. She implored me after the Quartet to NEVER take her to that sort of concert again. The Quartet spoke personally to me in its depth-my own music tastes go out to the Oort Cloud-but not to her at all-where she stops at the Troposphere. It’s language was foreign to her traditional classical ears raised on the tonal greats from the past. Since then, if there is a Mahler symphony or Rach. concerto we wish to see and there is a modernist type of piece on the program, I warn her in advance. She says, “Well……ok….I’ll get through it.” Even for me, though, George Walker`s music was a real slog to get through. My gosh. At that concert we had to eat the haggis before we got to the Beethoven!

As a contemporary classical composer myself, I agree with you. Modern, serious music has become too institutionalized, too often written to gain the respect of ivory tower intellectuals who expect progress, innovation, and novelty above all else. This leads to composers feeling pressured into going for shock value over musical merit. Of course, what sounds "good" is subjective, and it would be a shame if all modern, serious music still sounded like Bach or Beethoven, but composers should write music which sounds good to them. Some will naturally experiment and perhaps innovate more than others, and that is fine. There is no need to push for "progress." Let music evolve naturally.

As usual...it's Darmstadt's fault.

I think it's because it is bad

Excellent ❤

I think of it as people kind of losing the plot. Yes, progression is inevitable and good. But some people only become focused on progress and forget other elements which were essential to value, that being the capacity of the sounds to be emotionally resonant and stimulate meaning which is why music was valuable in the first place, because it had the capacity to make us feel and stimulate meaning. If the only metric is whether or not something sounds new, then you will forget about trying to integrate the stimulation of meaning and your work will only be valuable to a very niche group of people who only like it because they are also invested in simply doing different things, making things sound "new" and unique regardless of its capacity for emotional resonance.

Tonality/harmony is not dead. The attempt on its life by the ideologues of the atonal is a reflection of the post Nietzschean attack on transcendence. Harmony exists in perpetuity; it revels in, and reveals what is timeless; this is part of the radical disparity between the harmonic and the melodic; synchronic and diachronic, vertical and horizontal, timelessness and temporality - or it you prefer, transcendence and immanence. Yes I did enjoy the 'rant'. Encore!

Your discussion of the capitulation of contemporary classical music to the scientific paradigm of knowing - and of course there is more to it than mere knowing, since all art is fully loaded with rhetorical freight - is very enlightening. Science and art occupy antithetical ends of the epistemological spectrum inasmuch as science is always governed by its orientation to the future. The best science is necessarily later than the earliest. But the same does not hold true of art. The 'classical' example of this in the field of music would be that it is doubtful that the contribution of an individual like J. S. Bach has been surpassed, and almost just as probable that it might be. Art is epistemologically grounded in the temporal vector of past-to-present. There are many such examples which confirm this and many from media other than music. Artistic expression is not cumulatively 'progressive' in the sense that 'progress' is necessarily from the now to the next. (Technology is a different matter. The improvement in the construction of musical instruments has greatly increased and aided musical expression. At the same time, it has manifestly degraded the manufacture of the same instruments. But art is not technology.) We should be grateful of this. It curtails, and resolutely opposes the privileging of science as the unique and reigning cognitive paradigm. And there are indeed other instances apart from art. The mention of individual also points to a fundamental disparity between artistic and scientific genius. Musical composition like art in general, is profoundly, the product of an individual. Science cannot afford this same perspective; it arises innately from the collective aspect of human being. Comparatively to art, it is a radically inherently much more collective enterprise. Thanks for the post; it is one of the best on the topic.

If composers (and musicians generally) were more concerned with substance, rather than style, we'd all be better off -- even if it doesn't pay so well.

Jazz has many of the same problems now.

Thanks a lot. Probably a stupid question, but can Bach be used in RNBO patches as well?

epic? youtube recommended this vid with 69 views. nice.

Looks amazing ! Thank you for sharing.

❤

Thanks for a good video. Can I repeat back to you and see if I got it. Both are conceptual movements rather than a style. Modernism questions things like traditional western harmony and rythm. Therefore the tension and sometimes "weird" time signatures. Postmodernism takes this one step further and asks what is music to begin with, almost a completely chaotic state where a fundamental ground such as pulse or key center can be hard to define. Would we say Stravinsky and Prokofiev are loosely part of the modernist movement whereas Penderecki and Lutosławski are post-modernists? That said each and everyone of these would be part of other movements/styles as well?

But we also exist!! I compose music in the old style. The problem is that there's no visibility and no one is interested in us.

I write wonderful melodies!

Thanks for this great video. Shaderboi is just amazing, real cool project! For now I have just 2 limitations using it: 1) the video recording under Ubuntu only works if the resolution is under the one of the physical screen (actually even less given that the Ubuntu app bar creates a bug as well), I am not sure if this is an issue from Shaderboi or from the Nvidia drivers/ubuntu, and 2) the documentation is quite good but it would be great to have a few examples, e.g. on how to config the inputs to load images/videos/cubemaps/etc.

well...lets start with the music part...is it music? pretty doubtful. Is it Classical? imagine Mozart listening to it. I don't think he would recognize it as music. That leaves contemporary. Well yea...its contemporary all right.

Yes to all of this

Love this

Yes yes yes! This is much clearer and IMHO more accurate than what I encounter from other composers channels on UA-cam. I kept thinking I should make a video about this. Thank you!!

Contemporary classical music isn't music at all, it's sonology, sonics for its own sake. Even a lot of professional musicians don't want to be bothered by it, let alone the average classical music lover.

Very nice fusion of sound and light.

This man said it all. We need to write music for the people. It is as if we have forgotten why music is so loved.

Yeah, no, I don't think you understand Adorno at all. Very few people talking about Adorno have actually read the Philosophy of the new music and that is showing. I'm not even sure if you gain anything from reading it, if you don't really know much about philosophy.

Every person who has played a Make Noise Strega or a Soma Labs Lyra 8 is, by these definitions, a postmodernist musician. There is no noise, there is only music we haven't quantified.

Modern compositions can't even attain the level of musicality as Traumerii or Fur Elise, simple as those may seem.

Yes, they are writing from the head not the heart. In my view music is supposed to convey emotions, not intellect.

As a composer, I do not care at all about the current corrupt institutions; I want to communicate with real people, and that requires tonality. Here is my formula for success: (1) I have a comfortable retirement, (2) I compose symphonies in the style that I like, (3) I put those symphonies on UA-cam, (4) I pay a small marketing fee to get listeners, (5) I get monitized by UA-cam, (6) I repeat 2 through 5 as long as I like. Also, as a side note, I have evidence that those corrupt institutions are beginning to notice me. I do not care to communicate with them, but I am willing to let them communicate with me --- on my terms. Who knows where this might lead someday?

The problem over the last (7-8) decades was that many composers tried primary to be innovative/new, to be modern - instead of writing "personal" music ... when it's personal and the personality is strong enough it' s automatically NEW ... because every human is singular. Many "modern composers" have lost the audience (despite some praise by collegues and professors) - music has to give something musically valuable to listeners - if it doesn't why should anybody listen to it? ( better play it at home for yourself)

I enjoyed that but really....you were describing the whole history of formal art music (and fine art, popular music, art film etc etc).

Obsession with transitory musical styles, experiments and methods, noise and philosophy There's a serious inability to write beautiful music comprised by melody, harmony and graceful rhythm

We composers must, at all cost, be perceived as "serious." Now, either you do have serious new ideas (e.g. Ligeti, or as much as I don't care for his music, Lachenmann), or you don't. And if you don't, you're going to latch onto superficial features of genuinely serious music: to invoke the signifiers of seriousness, without genuine seriousness (such as, expressionist angstyness, but empty, lacking the cultural milieu of expressionism). Composers like Andriessen, or Julia Wolfe, are refreshing because they don't care whether you think they're serious or not.

My last brain cell carrying me like Atlus in an exam:

Have had this very experience at music college. So many young composers gave up writing because they were ridiculed about what they wrote. Luckily I found a sympathetic "individual lesson" tutor there. Other teachers were very scathing. One comment to someone I knew at the time was that they were simply a "tune-smith" How sad! ...and how wrong, to not let us find our own voices! I ignored them and wrote what was true to me! Excellent video.

Yes, I agree with your sentiments. My take here: 1) Reality: The majority of people simply doesn't connect or care for contemporary music. In fact, most consumers actively resent it and perceive it as insulting random noise. Most people want to listen to music that is somewhat similar to what they already know and like. The vast majority of people need to connect emotionally with music, not intellectually. Classical music used to be the popular music in its heydays. Contemporary classical music in turn is often only intellectually accessible - usually only to composers of contemporary music. 2) Biology: Our sense for music evolved alongside all other cognitive abilities through thousands of generations. Very few species have any sense for music. No other species can consciously compose. Why can we? The human sense of music is not arbitrary but evolved for a purpose. The primary evolved purpose of music is group identity and emotionally connecting with one another. Purely intellectual, abstract access to music is possible only for a small circle of trained experts. 3) Supply and demand: The commercial success of the various genres of music speaks volumes: Look up the most common classical composers streamed or performed or sold by e.g. Sony, Spotify, D. Gramophone, etc. etc. You won't find many composers from the last 80 or so years. Practically all "classical" genre music that gets consumed is from pre-1920. Or movie, game, or musical music. Same with the number of performances with paid tickets. 4) Contemporary composers are perhaps the only "business" that intentionally produces a "product" that most of their customers hate...

Adorno is mean, but I struggle to find good objections to his proposals. As a composer, I love consonant sounds, I love traditions. But in the context of this world, it is a losing game, it will always be associated, and compared, to popular music. I think he is right in claiming that the audience doesn't 'deserve' pleasing music. I know that sounds mean, but audiences are also incredibly mean. Try doing something different in the popular domain, it will be a very unpleasant experience, people will get angry, will say very hurtful things, because you dare to make them listen to sounds that are slightly different from what they expect, how horrible. Furthermore, our general relation to art is rather terrible. Most people just find it to be boring snobby nonsense, a waste of time and money, something reserved for the ultra elite and weirdos. If you tell an ordinary person that you are a musician/composer, they don't ask questions about your music, they ask if you make any money with it. That is the only thing that matters, do you make money, and, if it is a lot, are you famous. That is the only value you can have as an artist in this culture. And if you don't make enough money, then you are a 'failed artist', not 'good enough' to deserve a voice, in the same category as Hitler. I know this sounds very cynical, but I don't see how one can disagree. I too wish it wasn't the case, but wishing doesn't make it so. There is no way around it, the only way to please the audience is by giving them what they want, and, through more than a century of relentless indoctrination, all they want is popular music. In popular music there is only ruthless conformity, you do what we want or else. Yes, there is plenty of popular music I enjoy, but there is no denying that those artists aren't free, the music is not a genuine expression of their artistic activities. Maybe some of it is, but it can't be successfully popular without conforming to market pressures.

Do you think it's possible to strike a balance between pursuing progress and simultaneously offering a high level of artistic quality? Since the idea of "progress" is somewhat ambiguous, it's often referred to as something different from what came before; I think of Beethoven's sonatas, revolutionary works yet profoundly artistic. Therefore, one doesn't necessarily have to be disconnected from the other.

The pushing of the art form forward in a preconceived way from the halls of the academy is not freedom. It sounds like Soviet restrictions on art form. It sounds regressive. Plus, the Marxist emphasis on progress and the inherent hatred of the bourgeois capitalist society from the avant-garde and the post-modernists (a different kind of Marxist, a cultural Marxist) means that you work in a sound factory pushing out the same musical sound cog. And you should thank your lucky stars that the academy validates you and confirms your tawdry life as having meaning, as you bend over to oblige your masters. Yes, the cloistered halls of the academy are full of song, and modern classical music that would make people shriek and climb the walls of their soul if they heard it. A symphony of bug sounds, that sounds like Cricket Hell. Thank you university for the Cult of Ugliness and the Marxist retreat from bourgeois reality for the sake of a superficial novelty, progress, and whatever trite gibberish they think you're stupid enough to buy.

Where is all that schizophrenic hyperborean edits

Its Name.

Good thoughts. Ultimately, music is entertainment, so yes, the audience has a say. Haydn, who Stravinsky labeled the most innovative of composers, was mostly self-taught and largely guided by audience reaction. Teachers must thoroughly know techniqes but also must be sensitive to individual differences in order to nurture a voice: read up on Dave Brubeck and his different experiences with his teachers Arnold Schoenberg vs. Darius Milhaud. Does anyone discuss asthetics, how to self judge? Also, are the harmonic explorations of Jacob Collier being mined? Real progress expands expression. I think it is an exciting time to be a composer now!

Thank you so much for all those three videos. I've been thinking about this problem for a long time. Because for me nothing in CCM make scence. And you just explain it in a very philosophical way and tell me why it comes to the situation. Now I only have one more question, all of those institutions get their financial support from the country, so also from the tax. The thing is, now the ecnomy in the whole world is not doing well, the goverment got less tax and is cutting budget everywhere. What I know is that a lots of those CCM institutions got more than half or even 100% cut of their budget, so if they don't change the course, how long can they still survive?

Great video. My experience as a music composition student lead me to these same arguments. I will always experiment when composing electronic music, but I went back to melody, harmony, bass, and rhythm. I'm happier for it.

woaaaah

thanks!

You're describing academic composers and their students, not everyone. It's like you've never heard Adams or Rutter or Glass.