The Unbearable Irrelevance of Contemporary Music - a response to Samuel Andreyev
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- Опубліковано 18 лют 2018
- This is a response to the video by Samuel Andreyev entitled "Is Contemporary Music 'culturally relevant'? "
• Q&A: Is Contemporary M...
I didn't agree with everything Andreyev said in that video, and it's such an important subject for composers that I thought I would post my own view on it.
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Thanks for the shoutout!
Also, great video - I'm very excited about the success of Andreyev's channel, and excited about the future success of yours as well! There is an audience, for sure! People are hungry for knowledge, and hungry for connection to art.
Thanks a lot Adam, I appreciate it. Keep up the great work.
So, now that we are starting to get the music theory youtubers covered, are there any alternatives for modern/contemporary art? Haven't been able to find any so far.
haven't seen any, nor with contemporary poetry. I was trying to persuade my poet friend to start his own channel the other day! In fact I haven't even come across many people talking about classical music in general - plenty of players, but not much talking.
Not quite poetry per say, but on literature, you have "Thug Notes" from the chanel Wisecrack, where "Sparky Sweets, PhD" explores many important writen works in a lets call it Gangsta style presentation.
Hi David. I’m the first to argue for the need for composers and musical institutions to step outside of their bubble and learn how to interact with the public. I’ve repeated stated how urgent this is, and it’s what I am attempting to do, however tentatively and clumsily, through my channel and other endeavors. I don’t think it’s healthy that so many composers are ensconsed in academia or the machinery of public grants. My hope for the coming years and decades is that there will be a profound evolution in how such music is disseminated, which seems inevitable given the dramatic rise of the internet coupled with the collapse of public arts funding in many Western countries. It's either that, or an agonizing lurch into oblivion.
"I don’t think it’s healthy that so many composers are ensconsed in academia or the machinery of public grants".
When that doesn't happen, what we get is either starving musicians or sellouts. Unless, of course, it so happens that the language of your own earnest musical expression is already somewhat accessible, so you don't have to choose between starving or selling out. Academia provides an environment where musicians can ignore the trends and just honestly express themselves; this music may still be culturally irrelevant, but I don't see why that is bad.
Instead, what I think is dangerous for musicians is the ignorance of other styles of music. This limits their artistic palette and palate, so 'academic' music is indeed a problem, but not for the obvious reason that many have stated.
I'm a serious composer of many years living on the edge of oblivion and not at all ensconced in academia or living off of public grants, and this life, absent of all that's deemed socially good, is, I admit, an unhealthy lifestyle. And as far as I can tell, society has no platform for people like us to sound off from. I too would like to see a "profound evolution" but do not see it coming as long as popular culture is the dominant culture that seeks to control the social narrative, all in spite of the rise of the Internet. And contrary to members of the cultural elite, the collapse of public arts funding would have a liberating effect on the arts. What's needed are more private donors and impresarios and a gradual turn from mediocrity which is what pop culture is all about.
"[...] as long as popular culture is the dominant culture that seeks to control the social narrative [...]"
This is literally what "popular culture" is about; that's how it gets its name.
Classical music is dead, it's a relic, and there's no coming back, as much as people might try to change that. We don't live in the 19th century and the aristocracy is long gone, so Classical music will remain culturally irrelevant in the visible future.
Try to forget about composing for an audience and embrace the selfish approach of the Romantic composer who writes for no one but himself. Don't expect an applause, don't expect to make a living out of writing music. Also, find a day job! That's what I've done and so far I'm free from the anxiety of delivering on demand, and also free to express myself any way I want, without having to worry about obnoxious reviewers and conservative audiences.
There are many levels of subculture. Metal is a subculture, but has a huge following. Post rock is also a subculture, but there are more people listening to Mogwai and Sigur Ros than god knows who the trendy contemporary composers are (not me, unfortunately).
Out of all the subcultures, classical music is perhaps the least relevant, mainly because it derives from a dead culture (the culture of 17-19th century aristocracy).
"Relevancy" is of course a subjective and personal term, but if you wish to apply a totalitarian view of art and culture based on what's most popular, you don't understand the creative urge very well, or the forces that try to nurture it. Furthermore, you're leaving out the last 100 years: Stravinsky, Bartok, Sessions, Berio, Milhaud, Hindemith, Honegger, etc. And new music is being written, recorded and performed without any aristocracy. Where have you been?
As a student composer, my "popular" sounding works (neoromantic tonal orchestral pieces) are often praised by my non-musical friends and family, while dismissed by my colleagues and mentors for being not intellectual enough. I agree that contemporary classical music should do more to engage casual listeners while also making important points about culture and society, rather than simply existing for an academic, intellectual audience.
I had much the same problem. The way I see it, write for the audience that you want to have and disengage entirely from the audience you don't want. Even if those who have been dismissive of your music begin praising it, you'll just assume that they are idiots who like it for all the wrong reasons anyway.
This is the reason why I left the Conservatory. Did you finish your career as a composer? I kept bumping into so many roadblocks I eventually gave up.
To me I engage more with the music of the academia, it might not be your cup of tea -and that's okay- but it is mine. If me and my colleagues try to focus on engaging people we would have to forfeit all the qualities of our music, forcing ourselves to do what we don't like. I think even though our music does not communicate with people on a broader scale, it still communicates to a few outside the academia and I think its still worth it.
Student composer here also; totally agree with you. At my conservatory, many performance students are vocal about their distaste for contemporary music primarily in that it has no relevance or 'voice' outside of academia, and I feel that the greatest composer is one who can reach both those worlds.
I used to work at a classical radio station so I have a lot to say about this issue. I think classical musicians need to do A LOT more to get kids into it, and especially to see live performances by professionals. I think the way kids are introduced to music in American public schools isn't the best. They're taught to play instruments using the most confusing and boring methods. So they don't really see the point. And then the first and only live classical music they ever hear is their own scratchy out of tune school concerts. So they never realize what the ultimate end goal of playing an instrument is supposed to look like. Yet the teachers seem to not get that for some reason. They just wonder why the kids don't care and don't want to practice. Classical music is not taught in a way that's relateable. It's no wonder so many people think it's boring. Professional orchestras are going to have to solve this problem withing the next 15-20 years or they're going go the way of the Dodo. And yet they seem to not realize that or care any more than the teachers do, for some reason. I think every kid who's given an instrument in school should first be taken to see a professional performance. So they can hear what professional musicians sound like, so they say to themselves, "HOLY CRAP THAT WAS AMAZING! I WANT TO DO THAT!" Field trips to see the local city symphony should be just as regular as trips to science museums and historical villages. Places that don't have a symphony should bring in touring groups to play in the school. I don't understand why orchestra groups don't push for this. They could make a lot of regular money from schools paying them to perform. Plenty of other people and institutions make their living from performing in schools or hosting field trips. Do symphony groups think that's beneath them or something?
This is a good comment and I absolutely agree, what you describe is exactly what my own experience was like in an American school though. The issue is with money and if the principal is on board with the program and willing to secure funding for it instead of dumping it into sports or something else that just happens to be the principals fancy.
@@chuduhdia996 I went to a public school where everyone loved the music program and it was well supported. And no one really gave a crap about sports, especially football. We didn't even have a football team until two years into my high school career and that was the first time they've had one in like 70 years. And yet what I described in my original comment was still an issue. Sure, the schools need money to do field trips and assemblies, but the musicians themselves also need to step up and promote themselves. They don't want to do that, either.
"Classical music is not taught in a way that's relateable"
I think part of the problem is that the oldies are equally out of touch. Turn the radio on to a classic station at any random part of the day, and you're unlikely to hear anything that was composed in the last 100 years. And you want young people to relate? In an age where there's more choice of media and entertainment to consume than any other point in human history by several orders of magnitude?
It's not like young people aren't exposed to contemporary classical music. They hear it all the time when they play video games and watch anime or films. It's just that these composers don't get the same level of promotion as found in the American popular music industry.
In the anime world the composers are revered for what they contribute. The music is a significant part of the experience, and people take notice.
Kevin Penkins interview on Trash Taste has over a million views. People are interested. If you want young people to get invested in classical music, why not start promoting people like Kevin more? Why not do live performances of his work? Why does it always have to be people who have been dead for the last 300 years
@@illusion466 I get what you're saying, but I think the old music needs to be performed for kids first, when they're young to give them a base of understanding for everything that came later. I'm thinking like in the 5-9 age range. Then they can incorporate more new stuff once they get a little older and they'll probably appreciate it more. The works of Mozart and Beethoven Hayden and their contemporaries are the classics, and it got to be that way for a reason. They're still used in tons of movies and commercials for a reason. It's the basics of music, like bread and rice are the basics of food. It's no different than when schools teach things like Grim's Fairy Tales, or Romeo and Juliet, or Charles Dickens. When you understand that stuff, it gives you a frame of reference to get the style and influence of things that came later. Plus it would be such a good, stable source of income for local orchestras.
@@Melissa0774What do you mean, Mozart, Beethoven and Haydn are the "basics of music"? If you had said Pythagoras' work was the basics of music you would have made more sense, and even then I would have my doubts. The most culturally relevant music of our days' (essentially pop(ular) music, in its broadest definition) indebtedness to classical music is highly debatable, and I would actually venture to say it is minimal.
I have so many things I could write about on this subject but I will restrict myself to comenting on what I see to be the core of your video: from 3:46 to 4:43.
I am composer living in one of the few places where financing for contemporary music isn't doing that bad: Finland. However, whenever one is trying to get funding for a festival, a concert, or their own work, apply for a festival, or a call for scores, they keep facing the same challenge: "X society/festival wants new, bold initiatives". That forces everyone to try to present the art they are trying to create or organize as something never before seen, special and courageous, when in fact... you could be just trying to get funding for that nice piano trio that someone commissioned you. Instead you present the piano trio as inspired by a certain Sanskrit text, whit 11 movements of 22 seconds played on 33 different extended techniques, throw in something to do with prime numbers, all to impress the reviewer, even though you haven't even written the first bars yet. Or, you quit the piano trio idea altogether cause you're worried you're not gonna get funding, and instead apply for a clarinet piece with live electronics and installation that uses a new program that will create "a new world of sound". So I think it is very much the institutions and the need for some kind of criteria that resonates with the expectation that art presents (MODERN music, not just any music) which forces composers to always think and act outside the box.
And that becomes the box.
Thank you for this amazing video and channel!
@@licheong I am not so sure which would be the best way, but I think shouldn't only reward projects that sound good on paper from people with already long CVs, and I think there should be more funds with similar missions so you can apply for the same thing in various funds, not to pretend to re-brand your application to sound as if you're only applying in that one place. And yes, it does sound like planned economy. Problem is that music should be a living being evolving by itself, not something dependent on the "ideology" of what you called "planned economy".
Brilliantly put. Thinking outside the box becomes the box.
In the broadest sense, I think composers have become so caught up in the intellectual, in pushing the boundaries as it were, that they’ve forgotten that music essentially is communicative. It’s supposed to say something to people, and they need to be able to understand it. I was always obsessed as a songwriter (composer would be very generous but that’s where I want to be) with finding some original concept, but it’s a fools errand. The concepts we already know are tools to use, tools that convey meanings and emotions. They aren’t cliches, Mozart doesn’t own the Sonata Allegro form. We have centuries of ideas and themes to stitch together into an emotional journey, that’s where the originality is, just go nuts! Have fun with it. The rest will follow.
Your comment reminds me of one of my favorite explorations of what creativity and "originality" really are: Kirby Ferguson's "Everything is a remix". Also Rene Girard would have something to say about trying to be 'original', seeing as his mimetic desire theory states that all desires that are not animal instinct, are learned from some other person. We pick people we want to be like, and then we imitate the things that we think will make us like them. We can see this in the thing that we arguably learn first -- language. We want to be like our parents [and later friends/neighbors -- hence accents], so we copy the sounds they make so that we can be like them, and along the way, realize that we can communicate with these 'other beings' because of this.
This is a problem in EVERYTHING. Everyone wants the "next big thing", when at the same time, everything's been done before.
I see this in popular media all the time:
In gaming, the indie studios do cool stuff that goes unnoticed, while the big AAA studios either milk their cash cows dry or chase every trend like dogs would a car.
In movies, all we see are reboots and adaptations of stuff that already worked somewhere else. Also, I've read somewhere, that ALL stories are, in their core, one of 7 archtypes of story.
And in metal, the genre I listen to the most and that I also compose for, I see the lamentation all the time, that "metal is dead". All the same reasons as in classical music. The fans all want "something new", even though they don't know what that "new" is. If bands change too much, they are scorned as selling out or straying from their roots. If they re-record the, more or less, same album all over, fans say they lost their originality.
At the same time, metalheads put their titans, on whose shoulders everyone stands, above all else. The last Metallica album was, in my humble opinion, mediocre at best. Yet, because of it, Metallica provided the 4(!) most sold metal albums of the year, including some of their older records. In this environment, nothing "new" can ever grow big.
Music should go back to it's roots and just try to invoke emotion in people by expressing the composers' emotions. Or maybe, everything's already done and mankind is stuck in a loop of endless repetition. I don't know.
Man you just explained something I’ve had in my head so much better than I could have ever said.
the pitiful thing is that they think of their dismal music as being clever. if they had some small understanding of math and/or acoustics they wouldn't write music like that. the atonal farce went out, with a sad little squeaking sound, long long ago. the corpse is still off gassing and twitching a little.
I agree, and I'd also add that the idea of "oh that sounds very pretty" has been largely abandoned.
Actually, a lot of people hate contemporary art. I have studied in elite art schools and been in the art world more or less my entire life, and most people only attend such gallery openings with a kind of "emperor's new clothing" awkward silence when in reality they all secretly feel alienated and not interested in all in the work. If the art world wasn't a playground for money laundering of the world's elite, it would also fall into obscurity, much like a lot of the 'true' artists today have, who create actual valuable works of originality and beauty.
But yeah, I totally agree that "everything is NOT fine" - not at all. Art, real art in most forms, is not valued at all in society. I could go into a list of reasons for why that is, but it really comes down to a lack of aesthetic education and lack of art appreciation. Instead "history" of art is taught, and this is a mistake. Knowing the history of works of art does not teach people to understand the structure or meaning of works of art, and that's really mostly the problem as to why most people feel art is irrelevant to them: art is taught as a historical object, trapped in a time and place, and not as a deep and important element of the human experience in the here and now, in our lives in this moment. Just my two cents.
I agree.
Yes. I got a degree from a fine art school my self and agree. Most contemporary art is totally irelevant. The Irony is that most of it is not even original or in any way oppositional towards the establishment or art institutions, but rather copies of, or at least made by the same rules and standards as what has been done in the last 50 or more years.
YES.
Modern art is a con. For the most part there is little effort and even less talent involved in its creation.
Thread Bomb
Your prejudice is immature for the lack of empathy with other areas of art that you personally don't admire.
I had a defining moment when going to see the new music ensemble "Earplay" during my time as an SF State composition student. At the performance, about 50% of the audience consisted of myself and my 15ish classmates who were required to attend. The other 50% were the composers themselves and their friends/family. The hall seated about 400 and was mostly empty, and one could not escape that feeling the entire time.
However, I never got an sense from the composers or performers that anything was amiss about performing to a mostly-empty hall. In fact, I could feel almost a sense of elitism in the idea that so few had the musical knowledge to "truly appreciate" the works performed. The performance that most sticks in my memory is that which featured a "newly invented instrument," as the composer's notes proclaimed. Said instrument was a collection of random metal pieces affixed to a turntable powered by an electric motor that spun and caused the metal pieces to strike chimes and such hanging above. I felt almost insulted at the triumphant proclamation of having invented a new instrument. Was I supposed to place this device alongside a pipe organ, a violin, a trumpet, or an electric guitar in its musical capability or ability of a performer to utilize it for making music?
That was definitely my moment when I came to believe that music academia & this contemporary classical world care not for connecting with audiences, but rather for proclaiming whatever they create as high art and considering those who disagree to be somehow unable to grasp their supposed genius.
Very much enjoyed this. Will make sure to trumpet some of my favourite works from the last 100 years more often. It's feels almost tragic how many of my favourite composers remain unknown today.
Could we get some recommendations? Haven't seen much of that on your (excellent) channel.
I went through music conservatory studying composing. I learned a lot about music, and I still write (albeit not expecting to make any money from it), but one idea I ran through with everything I wrote was to pass it by an ordinary non-musician to see if they understood it. They didn't have to enjoy it (although they sometimes did), but if their reaction was "I don't get it", then I considered the piece a bad piece and treated it accordingly.
This of course made some of my stuff off-limits to most of the conservatory new music faculty, who were trying to push the boundaries of what was possible, constantly pushing me to make my music more extreme, less normal, and less focused on singable melodies or sometimes-consonant harmonies. I'm much happier writing where I don't have to concern myself with what they think.
Good comment. The reason why you were not treated well was because of your teachers strict loyality to their modernist paradigm/ideology. There are many fallacies in this "ideology". Their (modernist) world-view and method will not succeed - and is doomed to failure. Wish you all the best - and continue your own path with your audience.
@@anders7741 Well, my audience hasn't been able to see me perform live for almost a year thanks to Covid, but yes, I'm happy with what I can do for them.
Your teachers were disconnected from music, disconnected from audience and disconnected from the musicians. This is the norm - all over the world. The modernists (classical contemporary composers) cannot produce music that anybody would appreciate. Nobody. It is a dead end. But they have managed to monopolize music education - and act very totalitarian towards their students - that they have an intrinsict power on. This is very bad (immoral). Fortunately you were able to break free of their grip. Wish you all the best - continue on your own path - that is much much better
I feel the issue with modern academics in music is that institutions have become far too focused on experimenting or innovating in music, and this has resulted in them being more focused on creating music for the sake of being abstract, as opposed to making music for the sake of expressing yourself. Academic composition seems to me to be slowly becoming more about cool sounds then making legitimate music that moves people. You may as well just be a sound designer than a composer at this point.
I've listened to the "works" of these so-called "composers" in academia. Sounds worse than scratching nails on a blackboard. From the public's perspective, the best modern composers are mostly film composers. Despite extremely simple & repetitive harmony, even pop songs are more enjoyable to listen to. The so-called "professors of music composition" are utterly irrelevant to human civilization.
We really need to have a conversation about how the "great masters" were writers of popular music and were involved in the popular culture of their day. You can't become Beethoven if you don't become Lady Gaga first. I tend to be disappointed in how classical music is portrayed and performed to this very day.
hit the nail on the head - the idea of the "misunderstood composer" didn't come about until recently.
You make a good point, that the position of composers and their work in society has been different in different eras. I think it can be misleading, though, to try to frame classical composers as being 'of the people' in the same way pop music is today. How many people got to hear a Beethoven symphony? Was it art enjoyed by the masses (like a Lady Gaga song on Spotify), or was it a wealthy/educated elite who had access?
@@natevenet I think that shift was already happening by Beethoven's time with the rise of publicly-accessible concerts. One didn't need to be a noble patron who literally paid the entire cost of composing and performing the work to hear it; you only needed to be able to afford the price of admission (which was defrayed by the sheer number of attendees). It was this way for the premieres of many Mozart piano concertos, for instance.
Now, the _extreme_ accessibility of music on Spotify or UA-cam (or even the radio and vinyl records!) to those who couldn't even attend a concert--either because they could not afford it, or because they lived in a place where such concerts don't happen, or for some other reason--required modern technology, but that applies to all styles of music equally.
That being said, the sell-out popularity of the Eras Tour shows that the era of accessibility through live performance is not dead.
Once you said "conversation between the artist and society", that's when I knew I'd agree with you. It might be more obvious in the music world, but in the world of visual arts too, you sometimes feel you are exposed to works of art that are self-serving and made completely without any understanding on the part of the artist that art is first and foremost a means of communication. Contrived and deliberate attempts to be niche, obscure, and original seldom communicate anything particularly well as these tend to be purely intellectual exercises in avoiding what's been done before, whereas a desire to communicate something from an emotional viewpoint - disregarding whether it is original - is what people tend to respond and relate to.
When it comes to music, a lot of contemporary concert music sometimes seems an exercise in making something as cacophonous, non-melodic and atonal as possible, rather than having an emotional agenda expressed through music's unique ability to play with our expectations, how it lets us believe we know what's coming next only to surprise us followed by a moment when we again know what's coming next, subliminally tapping into our human instincts for survival.
That might still include cacophony, non-melody and atonality, of course. When it is done because you feel you have to - partly out of the fear of not being original - rather than because that is how you genuinely wish to express something, then that is what is communicated through the work. And listeners can tell the difference.
When I approach art, I don't want it to shut me out, as it will if it is busy with its own self-obsessed internal monologue; I want it to invite me in, to make me feel something, to communicate something that will only exist in my meeting with it as its genuine emotion, beauty, interesting ugliness, or accidental originality makes me see it, hear it and feel it. And thus it also makes me see something of myself in it. It needs to be interesting, and it needs to unapologetically be itself - not because the artist feels it has to be, but because that is what organically happened as the art was created.
Running the risk of repeating myself one time too many, I think originality is one of the keys to this: if an artist forces a work of art into being different than everyone else's out of fear of not being original, that usually makes art that communicates nothing (and, ironically, often ends up being completely unoriginal too). If the artist uses the art to express something never even thinking whether a work is original or not, that often makes art that is interesting and approachable.
Thank you for this comment, I've been looking for the words to describe what I was thinking and this is exactly it. Contemporary classical music seems to have lost its original purpose and expression. I can go back 100 years or more and the music of those times would actually move me. Im sure you can see many examples of this if you just search somewhere online "(...) music changed my life". And older music had this power since it was used by composers to express genuine feelings that they had, and the audience would feel this. But contemporary music now seems to be completely lacking of emotion, since it has become so focused on making music that is only conceptually interesting. Why must I have to appreciate a piece of art's innovativeness for it to have any value? Why can't this music have value for me just through me listening to it for its emotion?
It seems like the classical music scene has become a show and tell for who can make the most outrageous music, not a world of composers sharing their emotions and experiences through music.
The craft aspect of classical composing is alive, well, and lucrative, in the form of scoring for film, television, and games, is it not?
Yes, and at the same time many productions, especially televised series give meaning and a chance to reflect for their audience, when they're grounded in reality. That goes even for series like Twin Peaks. Often the result is thriving online communities. But I also see a parallel to modern academic music, and that is state sponsored movies. The state isn't neutral, and art needs to be free, for example to make critical statements about the state. I believe that art in whichever form has the power to - in lack of a better word - unite the people, whereas politics only seem to create growing divisions and frustrations.
except, the music in film, television, and games is for the most part crap.
@@00blodyhell00 Yes, but how many musical pieces have been written in total, and how many of them have become part of the generally accepted canon?
@@00blodyhell00 Crap is better than nothing at all, which is what modern classical music is. I prefer crap to loud noise.
@@konradswart4069 I used to think in a similar way once, but in fact the new classical music world has greatly moved forward, since the 1960ies. And even that is often neither noise nor loud.
I think the way classical composers are taught to compose is a major issue. At uni I just wanted to compose pretty flute duets/pretty music in general , but was actively discouraged because it wasn't 'intellegent' and didn't 'mark well'.
How can we expect composers to connect with their audiences if at uni we don't expect them to compose music, but simply compositions that Mark well!?
Anyway, since uni I've been composing beginner music as a way to learn to compose simple pieces of music that sound nice and won't bore the musician or audience for which it's intended (which is a surprisingly difficult task!) great video
I might be a weird person but when I lived in Oxfordshire - I regularly went of my own free will to the Barbican, Royal Festival Hall et al to hear contemporary music - it might be that I was brought up in Huddersfield where we have a Contemporary Music Festival which used to take over one of the regular subscription concerts in the Town Hall so I remember seeing a ballet-recitation-recital with music by Andriessen where the audience watched the dancing in mirrors and Peter Maxwell-Davis' 8 Songs for a Mad King where the woman next to me (I was in the cheap seats with the music students) grabbed my arm in shock when the singer actually smashed a violin.
Now I am in Bielefeld we have in the cultural mix some modern / contemporary music - for the 800th anniversary of the town we heard Hildegard of Bingen, Scelsi and Beethoven in the same concert - I liked them all.
This is one of the more enlightened comments. You’re not weird at all. Music
Education is an important part of the equation and it’s far from equal in the UK.
Man, I love the comments box in this channel. I think contemporary music has given us a lot of things that we can use, by example: harmony to color a piece, new form structures, new ways of analysis, motivical approaches, microtonality, etc. And these are tools that can be used to create more interesting music that not only can be attractive to a general audience, but that can be rich in concepts and expression. Is about finding the middle ground, kinda like jazz (in the sense that it can have a complex harmony and still be attractive to listeners).
And I think being mindful about your audience isn't the same as trying to gain their favor. I think the most acclaimed painters and artists in general used themes, forms and motifs that were relatable to their audience, and they became great not by creating something unrecognisable, but by creating something original with something relatable. Music works with the ear and with time. Most men are primarily visual, and even today mankind can't understand/perceive time as well as it wants to. So being a little bit mindful about it maybe would be a good approach.
Most people see "classical" as backgound music, or what you hear during a movie, rather than an art in of itself. It's a hard thing to grapple with but you can't sugar-coat it. Additionally, most composers choose to play what they resonate with, and increasingly, it is not classical.
The cultural isolation of modern music is a direct result of the contempt contemporary musicians hold for the general audience. Perhaps they should be called contemptorary artists?
That is not so, you have to listen to Romitelli and other current composers.
Because public is shit?
It's a very distasteful elitism.
I've thought about this multiple times. Went through college as a classical composer and french horn player. I had many performances there playing classical music, horn standard lit like the Mozart concerti and more recent works like the Ewazen horn sonata. Performing them felt empty. Although the style was correct, it felt devoid of personality (mainly because I was having trouble buying into it myself because when I performed it the JohnStacy way it was attacked for being not stylistically correct "you played Mozart like Strauss.")
On a smaller recital, I performed a short jazz piece I wrote just to fill the recital with another piece. That was the first time somebody talked to me afterward and said they were moved by the performance. Listening back to the classical performances, they all feel dull and mechanical, almost like certain books that you HAVE TO READ because of their literary value but you just feel drained after reading them because it was such a stale experience.
Later on I would try to merge my classical and jazz composition styles to write pieces that although they were accessible to a wide audience, still retained the intellectualism that is common in academic composition. This had some success.
Sometimes I wonder why I don't write more classical compositions, but then I remember that performance venues for those are incredibly limiting. Writing for an orchestra is not cheap, and even then, unless there is a competition going on, so few are willing to program a new piece. Chamber music is more possible, but even then drawing an audience is difficult unless you have the funding and connections to advertise it, and find a venue that would be willing to host you. This may not be true of large cities like New York, London, Tokyo, etc. But where I am (Amarillo, Tx) there are limited venues. This is why I am almost purely a jazz musician now. Writing new jazz music (or third-stream which I do a lot more because I don't want to get rid of my classical background) is much more likely to get performed because there are many more venues that take jazz ensembles than classical. (in the last year alone, 4 jazz clubs have opened in Amarillo and all 4 of them are growing a base quickly)
I think this may have a thing to do with it. I have heard of classical chamber ensembles performing in bars elsewhere in the world. Venue has much to do with it in that if you go to the people rather than expecting them to come to you. This seems contradictory, but what I was hearing about other places and what I experience where I live are both valid. What are your thoughts on this?
Beethoven had a helluva time getting orchestras together to play his symphonies and when he managed they refused to practice. That's why he wrote so many more sonatas, trios and quartets than symphonies. Plus he kept the complexity of his non-orchestral works well within the expertise of amateurs. In other words, this is an age old problem. Keep it accessible (virtuoso need not apply) and keep it small (4 or less parts). If it worked for Ludwig it'll work for you.
Classical Crossover?
I agree with Fidel M Flores in that this problem has always existed for classical music. I'll bet the 119th most populous city in Europe in the 19th century did not have a thriving classical music scene with a full orchestra or weekly professional chamber music concerts. Money is and has always been required.
There are way more performers and composers than there have ever been, but there are also a far greater proportion of music listeners than at any time in history, due to technology.
Fidel, that's not historically accurate. " Plus he kept the complexity of his non-orchestral works well within the expertise of amateurs." Some, but not even most.
WOW this is EXACTLY how I feel, but I'm only in my first year of college and I'm struggling what to do because I am losing interest in classical music, atleast "the way it's supposed to be played"
I was trained as a jazz composer at Berklee College of Music and now mostly do pop/folk/country songwriting. I'm afraid that there are simply limits set by physics itself, as to how "far out" and dissonant music can go before most people will turn away from it. There's a reason a perfect fifth sounds "nice," and it's not just because people were told it is supposed to sound nice. Good luck trying to get the populace to accept weird dissonant music with no repetitions or melody for people's minds to latch onto!
I’m a classical musician, but I’ve always been put off by the stuffy, supercilious atmosphere of classical concerts. Classical musicians - composers and performers alike - could start by losing the snooty attitude that, for example, forbids clapping between movements (unless it’s an opera aria, when they’re ~ expected ~ to clap, even if the singer wasn’t that good).
For goodness’ sake: the audience wants to express their appreciation, and we turn them down? That’s so incredibly arrogant. It should come as no surprise that when we treat an audience with such disrespect, we don’t get a very large crowd. Classical composers have the same attitude: since a few great works (e.g. Rite of Spring) met with hostile receptions initially, they assume that their works are great (because they take it for granted that they are geniuses) and a hostile reception shows the audience’s lack perception not their music’s lack of quality (because they assume the audience are fools).
For every work that met with jeers at first and turned out to be great later, there’s probably 100 that have met with jeers because they actually just sucked - but no one remembers those.
(PS: I LOVE David Bruce’s music.❤️)
Dude, you are spot on. My friend and I went to our 1st jazz show back in 1982 at a little theater in Pittsburgh and the entire audience was dressed to the nines and were very polite to the band with modest applause between each song. My friend and I just had on jeans and a heavy metal or punk concert shirts and would go crazy after someone played a blistering solo. We would get a lot of looks from the crowd and a few shushes, but nothing that crazy. Four months later we went to a classical show, dressed the same way. We got there late do to a traffic jam and they wouldn't let us into the theater until the 1st intermission, which was 45 minutes later. They wouldn't even open up the doors to let us see in. Once they did and everyone came rushing out, a few people told us we were dressed inappropriately. No hooping and hollering that show, it was pretty boring, they best part was making fun of everyone with the sticks up their butts.
@@recklessdeerhunters3969 Don’t blame you bit. It’s a shame, because this really is great music, but there are too many obstacles in the way of people who want to explore it. Things are starting to change and it’s not as stuffy as it used to be, but there’s still a long way to go.
I've never been to a classical concert that felt stuffy in the way you describe.
@@mileshall9235 Interesting, and great. Where have you attended?
@@macleadg Symphonies: Boston, Nagano Japan, Richmond VA, Reno. And various chamber orchestras. Probably Sacramento as well
The problem is that the romantic "I like it if and only if it is good" attitude prevails among even a lot a serious classical thinkers and composers. As long as that is the standard art music's long slide into irrelevance will only continue. I agree to some extent with Aniruddh Patel that music (at least as a parole) is a technology. Specifically it is a technology of expression. Babbit was right that "who cares if they listen" insofar as the goal is not to produce likeable music, but to increase our range of expression. The social "selling point" for art music is the same as for any fundamental research. The warning should be that neglecting fundamental research in favour of applied is the beginning of the end for a culture. We don't remember past cultures that only applied existing technology borrowed from other cultures, however effectively they did so, and certainly don't mourn their passing. As a species we need growth and development to stay in the same place.
Conversely a lot of serious composers wear obscurity as a badge of honour for its own sake, which is almost as bad.
I am not sure if I completely agree with all the point's you make. The bubble part... Yes I do agree. But I can tell you, there are people who genuinely love "contemporary" music. I myself study classical piano and composition so I do have a academic background. But I played in and watched recent performance of Stockhausen's Aus Licht in Amsterdam and it was the most musical enriching experience of my life. I brought some friends of mine who are relatively conservative (maybe something like Prokofiev is their "limit" so to say) but they had goosebumps throughout the whole piece and shared my opinion regarding how this work affected me. Indeed some of them have an academic background in music, but there were also people amongst them who studied something completely unrelated to music like law. The hall was filled with people who don't have a music background and the reactions were surprisingly enthousiastic and very positive. It opened up conversations about a lot of topics between musicians and non musicians. An other example: once I was playing a Ligeti etude on a train station. After I finished a train mechanic came to me and said he really loved what I played. He asked me what it was and immediately wrote it down and said he will look it up as soon as he arrives home. Sorry but I am of the opinion it's incorrect to say this music won't be relevant in the future because it wasn't 100 years ago. Don't forget no one gave a damn about Bach's music only until 100 years after his death ;)
spot-on.
The thing about Bach's music is, I think people cared quite a bit about it during his lifetime (or at least most of it), and it only fell out of favor afterward when he was no longer contemporary--at a time when popularizing music that _wasn't_ contemporary (in the way we do with Bach and Beethoven today) wasn't really a thing yet. As it _became_ a thing, Bach's music caught on once again.
Stockhausen's Samstag aus Licht in Milan was the only bit of classical music I walked out of. And I had paid money to see it. As music is subjective I can't prove that its bad any more than any other music. Nor can statistics, i.e. how many people like it be the determining indicator for the quality of the music. Can only say I think you are in the problematic bubble that's spoiling it for the rest of us, so no you wouldn't agree. A matter of perspective.
I believe that classical music in the 20th century was, for the most part, a huge and tragic waste of talent. The underlying idea seemed to be something like this: "Beethoven wrote difficult and challenging music that audiences at first rejected, but eventually he was acknowledged as a genius. I want to be like Beethoven, so I'll write difficult and challenging music too!" Leaving aside the question of whether Beethoven's audiences really ever rejected his music (I've read that this is a myth), I think this line of thinking has causality reversed. Beethoven wasn't deliberately trying to write difficult music; like other composers he was just trying to write the best music he could, and because he was in fact a genius much of it ended up highly original and "difficult." But if you aren't Beethoven to begin with, going out of your way to write complicated and difficult music isn't going to turn you into Beethoven! You just end up with complicated and difficult music that no one outside of a small cadre of dedicated enthusiasts will ever care about. I've read that Milton Babbitt was deeply bitter that the public never appreciated his music to the extent he thought it deserved. Well I once attended a premiere of one of Babbitt's works where he stood up and took a bow afterwards and got booed by a good chunk of the audience. It wasn't polite, but my opinion Babbitt got what he deserved.
A decent comment, but for the callous ending. Wouldn't you pity rather than shame someone for their mistakes? Having said that, I could be taking things out of context because I have no idea who that is.
20th century classical music is solely responsible for some of the most creative styles and genres in today’s music, it’s much more than Babbitt. On the contrary, I tend to think that the 19th century classical music is highly stagnant and dominant in music history narratives.
@@Bati_ "...solely responsible for some of the most creative *but* *least* *popular* styles and genres in today’s music...", There, fixed it for you.
I'm well aware that there is more to 20th century classical music than Babbitt, and in fact some of it I quite like. Nevertheless, David Bruce nails it in this video! Whatever abstract virtues you may think 20th century classical music might have, the fact remains that -- unlike earlier classical music -- the general public has very little interest in it, which strongly suggests that something went badly wrong at some point. I brought up Babbitt because in my opinion he epitomized the trends that did the most damage. I'm convinced that he had more musical talent in his little finger than I do in my entire body, and that he basically wasted it all.
@@hummingfrog Thanks for elaborating your stance! I appreciate reading it. However, I didn't mean "least popular" styles and genres. In other words, some of the most popular genres in today's music have substantial origins in 20th century music. For example, first activities of sampling sound (i.e. Stockhausen's work), experimentation in producing electronic sounds, Reich's and Glass's work which heavily influenced electronic music scene and film music and many more...
Great points, a long time ago I started studying music at university, coming from a non classical background, I dropped out because it felt like some weird clique or club. More contemporary styles (IDM, metal, other world music, experimental electornic, jazz) were looked down on as some kind of inferior kind of music for the less intelligent or something. I think this attitude can put a lot of people off, both from a learning musicians point of view and from a listeners point of view.
Sorry to hear about your experience. But unfortunately your experience is not the only one. Many have the same experience. There is a little clique of modernists that managed to hijack almost every teaching job in the western world. They control the education ufortunately. They try to "police" what is good and bad esthetics. And they succeed a lot - within their own institutions (where they work). And cause a lot of damage to you promising talents. Good that you left!
I went through the exact same experience.
I've definitely noticed a disparity in the quality of critique and analysis of music as compared to film.
Watch Andeyev's video on the Velvet Undergrounds "Story of a Murder" to see examples of what I mean. Lots of music critique devolves into a kind of meaningless purple prose.
Meanwhile, do a search for Stanley Kubrick or David Lynch on youtube and you'll find all kinds of thoughtful analysis, breakdowns of visual language, breakdowns of complex ideas and influences, and so on. Hell, the other day I watched an hour long analysis of "Don't Hug Me I'm Scared," and it was actually very brilliant and enlightening.
But when it comes to music analysis, the best you can hope for is that the critic paid attention to the lyrics, and if you're really lucky, they might have even understood most of them. Hell, you can almost sense the resentment from people when someone deigns to give music a higher standard of analysis to a piece of music.
12Tone did a great analysis of Pink Floyd's Comfortably Numb (and yes, all my examples are from Rock Music, that's just who I am) and a lot of the comments seemed almost *Resentful* of it, as if it's an insult to imply that musicians put thought into what they do.
Most people don't understand where music actually comes from. They have absolutely no insight into a composer's methods. You see it in the comments on a lot of classical music, people will give credit to anything but the composer. Usually it's God who is applauded.
That being said there are some good music analysts on UA-cam, the first one to spring to mind being Richard Atkinson, although his output is fairly slow.
You should also check Sideways channel if you haven't yet.
Well, their style is very different. Both Nerdwriter and Adam have a very "this is my opinion" kind of videos, which is fine of course. Whereas Samuel's videos are very much in the vein of "this is what's happening" and he highlights some truly amazing passages that could easily fly by without notice. To be honest, I never really paid much attention to Haydn before I saw his videos, he always seemed like a less interesting Mozart (or rather, Mozart was an extremely talented extension of Haydn), but now I like him more and more.
On a total sidenote, I actually sang Michael (Josef's brother) Haydn's Requiem in C minor a few years ago, and noticed some stonking similarities to Mozart's requiem. It's quite clear where Mozart got his inspiration.
I should have clarified. Samuel's analysis of Story of a Murder is totally on point, but in his video, he reads aloud some examples of *other* published critiques of the song, all of which were quite wordy and yet didn't really say anything.
It's a small part of the video, but it really stuck out to me, because I never really thought about how meatless and buzzword-laden a lot of my reading on music has actually been over the years.
I think I had a little stroke there for a second. I was actually talking about Richard Atkinson, but my brain tricked me into thinking he was called Samuel Atkinson. I haven't watched any of Samuel's videos, everything I said in the previous comment is entirely about Richard. Sorry about that.
I really appreciated watching this. It crystallises a lot of my impressions of an art form - contemporary music - which I do find rewarding precisely because it doesn't come with the baggage a lot of historical works does. It's always valuable to reflect on the distinction we unwittingly make on what's valued art and what isn't (reflected in some of the comments in this thread!) based on the accessibility of a piece of music. Thought provoking stuff. Thanks for sharing.
I think that rhapsody in blue is another classical piece that was written in the last 100 years that has gained lots of popularity
Ya, along with literally thousands or at least hundreds of others that he somehow forgot about.
Yes that one hit me the first time I heard it and its with me always!
Gershwin knew how to write for his audience, even when he was venturing into new areas. Bear in mind that Rhapsody in Blue was commissioned by Paul Whiteman, the most popular band conductor of the day. We can only wonder where Gershwin's music would have gone had he been given a decent life span.
Also written since rite of spring:
The Planets - Gustav Holst
Peter and the Wolf - Prokofiev
Montagues and Capulets (from Romeo and Juliet) - Also Prokofiev
@@BenTajer89 Concierto de Aranjuez - Joaquin Rodrigo - one of the most performed concertos of the twentieth century.
There is a mountain of material popular with the public. None of it serialist.
In all areas of the modern arts "difficulty" and a supposed shock factor connected to originality purely for its own sake has become a deeply entrenched dogma, while basic aesthetics has been largely ignored.
Classical music went wrong when it largely threw out melody, harmony and many of the time-honoured traditional elements that make music both comprehensible and meaningful to the listener.
The same way modern poetry went wrong when it largely eschewed rhyme, meter and the other structurally constraining elements that once made it quite a popular and well-regarded element within society.
It would be interesting to see modern architects try to get away with the same kind of thing i.e. ignore the basic structural elements of their art.
The only reason they don't is that people would die because of it, and said architects would end up in prison. If composers and poets do the same thing no-one dies (only the culture dies off somewhat, due to the consequent waning of public interest).
It's possible to write good free verse (e.g. R.S. Thomas) but the vast majority of it is crap, because anyone can do it, and no learning of the craft has been necessary. Likewise I suppose it's possible to write good (plinkety-plonkety) modern classical music but, again, the vast majority of it is awful, tedious, instantly forgettable, self-indulgent crap.
So there :)
So, what you are saying is that it is good to have a game plan, and that game plan relies on time honored properties of melody, harmony and tonality?
Agree with this well said
This topic is quite close to my heart as an amateur pianist/composer. I wonder why the forced disengagement from tonality is so prevalent. I dont see many aspiring pianists dying to learn to play Stockhausen or Xenakis. Why is it so bad to want to enjoy the music you write or want to play ?
99% of the music I listen to is tonal in some way, but I find it inbearably presumptuous to say that modern music / poetry went "the wrong way" by expanding the palette of techniques and expressions. You don't have to like it, but great music is still being made, inside and outside the field of avantgarde music.
Part of the difficulty of broadening the audience is that there is likely a fundamental disconnect between what composer and listener perceive as the purpose of music. Can you dance to 'contemporary classical', and if so, how? Does it lend itself to multimedia (e.g. cinema, video games) well? Is the primary purpose of this music to be performed in concert halls, or can it be brought to parks, pavilions, and backyards? How much is lost when it's played on a Bluetooth wireless speaker? How much is lost when it's recorded at all?
Loving the channel and discussion- Im a high school band director in the US northeast and Im in my first year at a new school. This time around I'm trying to incorporate large-ensemble improvisation a la Butch Morris and Walter Thompson as a way to open students' ears up to larger musical concepts and to "modern" sounds. It's my gamble that this will be how we open up students' ears to the types of aural soundscapes that have been developed in obscurity for the past 100 years.
May I know the source of the interspersed clips that showed a Rite of Spring performance along with the audience's reaction to it? Sorry to be late to this party. :)
When I was 15, Yo-Yo Ma played a piece of mine called "Soliloquy." Second movement of a cello sonata I'd written at Juilliard pre-college.
It was loved by the hall and it catapulted me into a spotlight I could not keep up: my education, which was an ivy league, hypothetically best-you-can-get, told me that everything I had ever known about why I composed - which really came from my training as a classical pianist, starting at age 4 - and my identity was shattered.
@David Bruce Composer I suppose that alll I heard was: this music is not your voice. And essentially I was coached to add wrong notes into my music. There went my natural intensely personal world of music - my shattered identity has not yet recovered. No one, including any therapist I've been to, can account for my trauma, nor validate it.
I'm on my own here. I went to schools arguably the best in the States (and spent a year at King's College London). The irrelevance of classical music to the general student population there was evident. I joined a rugby team and all I wanted, all I desperately wanted, was to belong, was to be able to write without second guessing and invalidating myself.
Yes, I've gone though serious traumas, ones no humans can forgive, but I have had to release them in order to survive.
My parents are aging. They are not musicians. Because of the abilities I exhibited at the age of 2, whilst listening to Swan Lake, I was already labeled a child prodigy. I did excellently at the subjects to which I applied myself. It has been years since I gradated with a DMA in '17, but since then, the landscape had changed so much - normal people were interested in me, yes, but even those benign did not know how to deal with me - I was 'lab rat' material to be studied and would gladly offer myself up to see if there's a dictation in the world I can't take down at first sight, at least a single line at a time, perhaps two. I was the only other composer to be accepted into my doctoral program. Back during my masters' exams, the other composer happened to be sat next to me. I didn't notice him at the time. I was too busy writing every single note of a Bach sinfonia down. To my knowledge no one has ever completed that exam nor the theory exam from New England Conservatory, which was completed in 22 hours, which the Dean told me was, as quoted, the strongest the school had yet seen.
Yet here I am, lost between two worlds. My music is not for pop audiences nor is it for the contemporary classical music world of today.
But I'm sure that we've been missing something here: *the way music is taught at universities in the first place.* I teach. I never judge. But it's not just that - I have my own theory about what such an understanding of music is, as I showed at the age of 2, and it has just hit me. If you are interested in learning my answer, please answer this comment, or write adamopoulos1010@gmail.com. Implementing such a strategy is not only vital to the survival of the art at all, it is vital to the survival of humanity. We all know that at this rate we will be gone before we know it.
Can I listen to your composition on youtube?
@@machida5114 I, too, would love to listen to it as well. Keep strong! Yo'u're a hero to me! Best wishes from Córdoba, Argentina.
You sound insane and irrationally self-important
People have more choices than ever before. Attention spans are shorter. It's becoming less important to have people focus on one particular artist, genre, or even medium. We'll never have another Beatles again because of this.
I'm interested in how younger people, teens and twenties, view music. I own a music school in Tokyo and we often have discussions about today's youth and music. There is an interest for contemporary music here - in video game soundtracks. Many which feature full orchestras. It's not rare to find an average high school student obsessed with both the popular music of the time (in Japan: AKB, Arashi, Smap, ect.) and video game music. One of my students did a study of walking around Tokyo and stopping students wearing headphones to ask them what they were listening to. VGM won by a landslide! When I asked if any of these students attend concerts that feature VGM most said no. Blaming their busy study schedule.
To answer your final question: personally, I'm interested in a mix of composition, improvisation, music games, and music education. With a focus on "unconventional" music. So, I started a school that teaches this stuff. And I keep up various performances, festivals, and workshops involving as many people as I can. Which is something I believe anyone with enough ambition could, and should, do.
Thanks, I have a feeling you are doing a lot more than your fair share to make music relevant! I confess I don't know much VGM music - are there any that you particularly rate?
Aren't we all!
A few years back I was opened up to the world of VGM. There's a lot to take in! Like film music the experience is drastically different when listening detached from playing the game. This is what my students scolded me on anyway when I told them that I would listen to a few snippets of VGM off of YT! For example, the music of a peaceful town that one returns to again and again after being out on dangerous adventures creates a strong connection to the player. The same piece is heard many times, and always in the same comfortable safe environment the town is supposed to represent. Or, if a character falls to low health, a particular cue or motif, is triggered which enhances the state of panic a lot differently than suspenseful music in a film - the music is actually telling you to psychically do something or there will be negative consequences.
Recommendations - I'm no expert but: try the Skyrim OST by Jeremy Soule. The Journey OST by Austin Wintory is another fantastic one. Both orchestra scores.
Though many of the VGM scores that impressed me were recorded by small quirky ensembles. Animal Crossing creates it's own world. As does the music from the Zelda series and even those that worked within the limitations of 16 bit such as Chrono Trigger.
v.interesting in terms of the way the music gets tied to certain feelings in the game, reminds me of the story of how a Kenny G song is played at railway stations in the evenings in China (if I remember right), so a lot of Chinese people have very warm associations with it. Will check out the egs you mention, thanks.
This is a pretty important comment imo. I'm 24, and I would not be here watching this video if my interest for classical music wasn't given to me in a passive way by playing video games and watching films. I even went to see The Legend of Zelda: Symphony of the Goddesses for the second time recently and was enthralled - I came out with an urge to see more live orchestral music. I frequently listen to the Journey OST also.
I think contemporary classical is very much alive and well in this sphere - definitely take a look David Bruce!
Thanks, that's great to hear. I hope it opens lots of new and exciting doors for you!
Just found this video but thanks for sharing. I have been debating this question for years and going back and forth with my compositions on how to approach them. And indeed, when I was indecisive I had a blurry uninteresting piece.
This video has truly inspired me. I am currently studying composition in Vienna at MDW and at least in my opinion the things you said are true. My Uni is a bubble, everyone wants to impress and be impressed by each other. No one thinks about the outside world. What I personally believe to be a huge problem is that everyone tries to get one's peers and teachers to appreciate and accept them, a strategy that the institution forces upon us students. You can't hold onto your tonal (often romanticism) mind (which almost every beginner has) and nourish the explosion of new ideas, worlds, inspirations into your own style. No. You have to abandon your "traditional" mindset and surrender to an in my opinion extremely strict music dogma. The problem I see with most of my peers in Vienna is, that they completely forget about their instinct, their sense of beauty and aesthetics, their inner voice and force themselves to write in the "uni-normative" way. Their hearts and brains go seperate ways... I truly think the problem is that we are not in the ivory tower anymore. We are deluded by an older generation that is stuck in the myth of the absolute and indisputably new music. But it's only a ruin that those who hold onto try to decorate with eccentric, arrogant lies to hide the truth that they themselves don't even realize: their own love for music has vanished a long time ago.
Oskar Gigele Alma Deutscher, composer, orchestrator, and performer of Operas, Piano and Violin Concertos (on a loaner Guarneri del Gesu) ... Music should be beautiful.
The problem with contemporary music is that it has become much too insular and centered around universities. It also makes too many demands on the listener, something that has been there from the beginning, for instance, I had to take a music appreciation class in order to learn how to listen to "serious" music. And, though I found this to be a worth while endeavor I also understood the consternation of my fellow classmates who felt the entire concept of "learning" how to listen to music was ridiculous. I can think of analogues in the visual arts; the painter Mark Rothko painted pieces that were technically simple but Discursively complex and made extensive demands of the viewer. Rothko was challenging the viewer to make sense of his paintings through their (the observers) knowledge of the art form, and not showcasing his ability for the casual consumption of the observer. Contemporary classical music has become this type of art almost exclusively; the layman can like a contemporary piece, but only someone with an education in the art form can understand it. Its this latter expectation of getting the "point" of a contemporary piece that leads to the chasm between composers and their audiences now.
Lots of good comments here.
My problem with contemporary classic music is that it is so abstract that the average listener and even musicians will never understand it. In my opinion art/music should be made to please people or to provoke and anger them rather than self expression. If art doesn't affect the viewers/listerners emotions it doesn't serve any purpose.
Good examples of relevant contemporary music are the works of brass band and wind band composers like Philip Sparke.
Self-expression is also just as important, but I agree that art should always strive to do something positive for the audience
This is my favorite video of yours. A composer myself, I want to make sure to make music that reaches outside of this "bubble" you refer to. This is partly because I don't feel right at home in this "cosy academic contemporary music world". It's part of me for sure, but I am looking for more. I am thinking to start a youtube channel about making music and talking about my music and music I love. All of you (yourself, Samuel and Adam) are very inspiring to watch!
what's the original video from 3:30 where a guy is mocking Stravinsky?
Riot at the rite on yt on 47:50
Untill the classical music establishment embraces it's own contemporary voices it seems hopeless. The baton of relevant art music has been passed to jazz which it self only comprises a very small demographic and film music. Film music is today the only involved informed instrumental form receiving wide distribution. Unfortunately.
THere are the originators, then the ones payed because someone can't afford Hans Zimmer. THat's how that operation works...even older ones such as Jerry Goldsmith have a repertiore of different style because they emulate (have you heard the unedited Alien soundtrack? did someone say stravinsky in space?) But plenty that don't use a computer and midi-keyboard. there's a lot of noise but no one really knows the noise... people have heard of Hans Zimmer, Clint Mansell etc. Another interesting one is Jonny Greenwood, guitarist in a rock badn, converting peope to classical not only because he's doing his messiaen/penderecki inspired film scores, but because he is trying to refresh it by performing classical music in rock styl venues with the more spontaneous approach, and in a place where people are receptive to it, but would never go to a concert hall. I call it the 'post-rock' scene, people who were more used to punk decided they like the crescendos, instrumental music, and big instrumentation...but only had guitars: thus a popular involved instrumental, conceptual, LONG, style that a lot of people listen to (godspeed, sigur ros, explosions in the sky....not that rare i guess..immediately emotional....emotions is what people want, something ignored by a lot of contemporary music with orchestral instrumentation.)@No One
@No One I can generally tell when it's a John Williams score. That said, composers develop their own voice after initially copying the styles of others.
I am nowhere near the level of well known composers. That said, my philosophy of composition is to create tension and resolution. I want something to pull the piece along from one section to another.
1)The classical music establishment does embrace its contemporary voices as David discussed (academic world). It's the general public who don't embrace it.
2) I think it a stretch to claim Jazz has taken the baton, it's certainly more popular in many environments (but a lot less popular in others) than classical art music, but the atonal jazz stuff that claims to be cutting edge has a popularity en par with contemporary classical art music: i.e. most people just give it a miss. The reasons why aren't difficult to discover, just ask a few of them - they don't like it.
Richard Christie Of course people don't like it. I can tell you why that is in a very elaborate analysis of contemporary classical music. But be warned, this will be a wall of text.
It's utter shite.
The problem with Contemporary Music is the same problem that happens in any mature field, whether art, science, engineering or whatever. It is now a specialist subject and it takes a lot of study to just to understand and appreciate the current state. This means the general public can no more understand good Contemporary Music than they can understand the top chess players or great computer coding. The difference is that in certain fields there are proxies that let the public know someone is actually any good - Magnus Carlson beats everyone at chess, Elon Musk gave us the synchronised automated landing of two rockets, the iphone exists. But for Contemporary Music there is no proxy and it sounds awful to anyone who hasn't had a liking for the naive aspects of music beaten out of them.
What absolute twaddle. "I don't see why the whole world should be taken up with art, DEMAND ITS CREDENTIALS, and on that subject give free rein to its own stupidity." - Picasso . No one. Not one person on earth needs anyone else to define their own aesthetics for them. Certainly not the morons writing "contemporary classical" - the moniker itself an oxymoron created by morons.
At no point was a liking for naive aspects of music beaten out of me. I was a child, I listened to music, these appetites emerged, naivete was no longer enough. I didn't have to be trained or learn to desire this, it just happened, and I'd probably be happier if I didn't.
What you're referring to is not actually a meritocracy/credentials, but rarefaction. The best in any line of art or science are driven on by the urge to impress each other/discover the new and their limits. They hope the bills will somehow get paid. It ultimately ends up producing something with no economic leg to stand on, it actually does in science, engineering, and enterprise too. So you're sort of half right.
I agree with you. It's become too complicated for the average person or even just non musician for the most part. I'm a musician and struggle with a lot of contemporary music though I'm too curious to stop exploring. Do you recommend any living (or underrated) contemporary composers to check out? any particular pieces?
@@brentmarquez4157 Gavin Bryars. He instantly connected with me even when I wasn't into contemporary music. The album with the "Double Bass concerto" is fantastic. The sinking of the titanic is a great piece of minimalistic work as well. Someone who also did was Iannis Xenakis, his orchestral works. Also, Unsuk Chin's Violin Concerto
@@finneganlindsay Thanks for the suggestions! I never could get into minimalism though - the repetition gets a little ... repetitive lol. I'm more into things like Boulez, Ives and to a lesser extent Elliot Carter, but am also not really attracted to music that is just cerebral without some kind of soul (serial music for example). Xenakis seems interesting - will check more of his music out. The Chin concerto was also interesting but started to feel like a bunch of effects after a while - probably need to listen to it more to see if it becomes more moving and stimulating in some way.
This is really cool. I think I found your channel just from having "watched" a tuning note video a lot! Which led to getting some suggestions of music theory like channels. I've never been very engaged with classical music as a style, but it's interesting to learn about, and video game soundtracks have drawn me in a little too. Plus I've always loved composing (or songwriting, as I'd more usually call it) as well as the theory of it.
Hi good videos. Something I ever ask my self is, what is definied as an classical or academic music composition. It is about the instruments? or the whay harmony and melodies move?. Can somebody compose something "classical" just by ear or suggesting a melody then writing harmony to thart melody and separate in movements. Thanks my english is bad sorry
If you turn your back on your audience, don't be surprised when they turn their back on you in kind.
I personally love contemporary classical music. I seek it out, and love hearing new things. A lot of it is terrible, but only through listening to as much of it as I can, do I find those hidden gems. I wish orchestras had the balls to perform more of it. I would likely attend more concerts if they did.
I love your channel! I never have conversations with anyone about music variations in style and appreciation and that makes me sad. But your channel has given me hope for others that need this to open their minds and ears to the wonderful world around them. Thank you so much for this channel. I feel warm and fuzzy now!
This is very nice to have conversation on this subject. I think that today especially we have so many genres and artists that it's impossible to keep up. Never was there a time of internet where people have access to most of these artist, and so I think that nowadays classical music is just not that popular among people. I believe that has to do a lot with how modern and contemporary music is made, the goal is to be original and to "surpass" the composers of the past. I don't think music should be that shallow. The only thing we can do to ''bring back'' the relevance is to show people that they can indeed enjoy unconventional music and that there is something meaningful and profound in it.
I like music, so much in fact that I became a musician.
Sometimes I wonder if the general public does not like music, and instead like the emotional attachments that the music brings back.
I will leave it at that, as I am more interested in what others would say about this, than to read my own thoughts.
Excellent video / content.
Far more people listen to music now than ever have at any point in history due to technological advances. And that whole second sentence really makes no sense- the majority of music has always intentionally evoked emotions as part of its nature and purpose.
C.R. Anderson Oh man, you're so pessimistic! TONS of people are listening to more of the biggest variety of music than ever before, and it has a more intimate, vital, and active connection with our culture than it has ever had.
As two contemporary classical composers who have a broad knowledge of music and who have come to UA-cam to share that knowledge, it looks like there is a lot of potential for collaboration between you and Andreyev. I wonder if Andreyev would be interested in the 5 composers 1 theme series.
What’s the composition played in the very beginning of the video called?
May I ask why you have displayed makrosmos in the video but not mentioned George Crumb? And could you please do a video on George Crumb, I love your view on music.
I think it is pretty simple: make music you love. If it makes you feel love (in some form) then it will make others feel too. "Cultural relevance" is just a byproduct of a lot of people loving something. It's not a problem you can solve by thinking about it because too much thinking is the cause. Make people feel something, instead of trying to impress people, and cultural relevance takes care of itself.
It's not entirely true that music from the past 100-120 years lacks relevance--even despite the inward lurch of art music into academia. Let's bear in mind the influence 20th Century composers had on movie and TV scores. Schoenberg, who wound up moving to Hollywood and teaching at USC and UCLA, never got to the contract stage of composing for movies and TV, but students of his applied his atonal/12-tone style to convey suspense, horror, violence and dark moods in film and TV scores--it's why I think of Schoenberg as the forefather of "don't-go-in-the-basement" music. Even in the classic kungfu movies of Run Run Shaw, one can hear hints of Berg, Bartok and Stravinsky in the scores. And John Williams has never shied from utilizing ideas of 20th Century composers.
Even some of the great art composers did get contracted to compose film scores, like Aaron Copland, Leonard Bernstein, Sergei Prokofieff, William Walton and Dmitri Shostakovich. There's also the influence modern composers had on jazz artists, like Miles Davis and Charlie Parker, among others. (And one of Bird's sidemen, Willie Ruff, studied with Paul Hindemith at Yale.)
However, as art composers withdrew further into academia, their influence on more popular media diminished, leading to hackneyed and unmemorable scores in more recent movies. (The work of Hans Zimmer and Junkie XL come to mind. The use of temp tracks in the editing room hasn't helped, either.)
If contemporary composers can find ways to show the value of their work in more popular media, that may be a way of regaining relevance. Venturing out of the proverbial ivory tower, as a growing number of artists are doing with the internet, may also help in that regard.
This is a video I hope you will make sometime. I’ve always wanted you to analyze the works of the English brass band writer, Paul Lovatt Cooper. To me, he is an inspiration to my brass playing and Cooper is a phenomenal dynamic writer. I would like to see a video where you look at the way he writes and why he is so effective at capturing and conveying emotions in his scores. Any words back would be a huge plus! Keep up the good work!
I think that on part of the problem is that "classical" (or serious, whatever) music is rarely heard live. What might sound flat and irrelevant through speakers, when it just bounces off people, can really grip listeners when witnessed live. This seems t o be true for all music, but somehow it has a much bigger impact in this genre. And you make a vry important point about the effect of time.
If you think that whatever music you write now will be irrelevant, think of how excited someone will be far beyond your lifetime when they discover it.
I love this thought. I'm just not sure where to leave it so someone CAN discover it!! ;-)
"Pale imitations of things they already know and love" = present day pop music
EDM does not mimic anything I know and love .
Recently (yesterday waiting for bus) found your channel. Thank you, your style, knowledge and sense of humor are appreciated.I'm not a musician, but a fan of classical music. ( true classical fans would find me completely illiterate of the art,I am, that's fine I like the music and am trying to learn) My cheat is a book I got at a yard sale, listing composers and their most famous works and what's good about them. (Ah, Bach) I must admit that when I tell most people I know,or meet I like classical music, the blood drains from their face and I see them mentally looking for an out in the conversation. Tell them about some of the contemporary classical music I listen too and any excuse will do.The flip side is they are a serious fan and look down on my basic knowledge .The classical/academic community has brought much of this upon themselves, but equally if not more to blame are people themselves refusing to step outside their musical bubbles. Unless you deliberately look for different music you will not find it. This fear of "different" music isn't limited to classical, most rock fans cannot sit through Trout Mask Replica.
A thoughtful video. I'm always interested in this topic, as someone who somehow just happened to have an appreciation for much of the more "challenging" music of the 20th Century and later. After talking to many musicians, music academics (in grad school for music) and music lovers, I'm convinced that old stigma about "classical music" is still pretty much alive and well. As you point out, some figures respected in other areas, like Stanley Kubrick, have brought attention to a few composers who would otherwise be ignored by the general public. But how often does this kind of recognition go beyond the superficial ("Ligeti, yeah he's 'cool', etc)? I think most people still think "classical music" is an intellectual exercise, or something aimed only at "elites" with advanced degrees, or stuffy rich people. They can take hearing Mozart, maybe even Mahler or Stravinsky, but give them anything more "difficult" and they're turned off. As Schoenberg (I think it was) said "my music is not for everyone"---without sounding like a snob, I really think most people want music (or art in general) to be easy to digest. With film--to use your very good example of THERE WILL BE BLOOD, or a David Lynch film like MUHLHOLLAND DR--there is stimulation and interest on multiple levels (music yes, but dialog and the very powerful visual mode), so more people can be drawn to it (though many hate this type of film as well). If you talk to some people who like film, many will admit they pay no attention to musical scores, while some--like myself--were partly brought to the world of "advanced" composition by film music. Without compromising your artistic integrity, I don't think it's possible to produce music that will appeal to a greater audience, unless that is a kind of music you want to make (and there's nothing wrong with those who do. Some of us just prefer to hear something a bit more challenging now and then). Thanks for posting your video! ;) Sorry to go on so long.
As a jazz musician who casually listens to classical music- it often seems like many contemporary classical composers try too hard to be “hip”. It almost seems like certain composers prioritize being unique or avant-garde over making music that sounds good. I know sounding good is subjective, but there’s a reason Bach performances can still sell out concert halls almost 300 years after his music was written.
i know its been 2 years, but as also a jazz musician I couldnt agree more. Except for the last part in a way. The reason Bach is still played in concert halls is because we tend to hold classical music as THE music. We teach musicians starting with classical music as if its the addition of music. That's not how it should be, considering it ignores every other genera of music ever made. I could make that argument about mongolian classical music because it tends to have the same kind of cultural pedestal that we put western classical music on.
@@Enderrock424 No. Bach still sells because his music is absurdly beautiful, that's it. If you say that about bach then you can say the same thing about Jazz legends like davis because Jazz elitism definitely exists too and nowadays Jazz isn't particularly popular either, wether or not elitism exists has nothing to do with the fact that these musicians made amazing music and that is the reason people listen to them after so many years.
Also bach is Objectively the greatest composer to ever live lol.
Yes, many people hold classical music in high regard, but there is nothing surprising about that since most things that all other genres of music give for granted (i.e. tonality) developed historically in classical music, so in that sense it is "the music" in the sense that it basically parented and developed the fundamentals of every other genre of western music, and its not an elitist thing to say.
And besides, if you really like good music there simply aren't any other genres as rich and beautiful as Classical besides Jazz and maybe some regional cultured folk music like Bossa nova, tango or flamenco, wich often take huge influence from either Jazz or Classical.
@@marcossidoruk8033 you just said “Bach is the greatest composer to ever live” then used the word “objectively”, you just made yourself look like a clown. and yeah of course jazz elitism exists i would argue it’s not the same form as classical elitism simply because jazz has not been around nearly as long.
here i’ll say something that’ll piss you off, i don’t think Bachs music is beautiful at all, i think it’s kinda cookie cutter, Mozart is better but Coltrane is actually my favorite composer of all time
@@marcossidoruk8033 but i stand by everything i said, Ill concede sense i said that 2 years ago that that is not the only reason people play bach and that was a dumb thing for me to say, but classical music is actually not the foundation of every kind of music we know, that’s just not true, Jazz in itself is not actually derivative of classical the way people say it is, it’s derivative of african drum as the foundation of jazz music and influenced, note the word influenced, by european tin pan alley, which is more derivative of Folk music then classical but it would be dishonest of me to say classical wasn’t a major part of that.
so the truth is, it’s really complicated, i’ve taken a lot of classes sense i wrote that comment about jazz history and music history but i stand by one thing, we consider classical as THE music, yes a lot of people continue to play classical because they love it but our society has a problem of teaching other genres that are so distant from classical it’s not recognizable, through the eye of classical, regardless of if it makes sense or not.
also sorry for that first comment it came off a lot more rude then i intended it to be
I think another problem with this irrelevance is the shocking lack of musical education in today's schooling. Everyone learns a lot about art, English, and math, but having a music education is part of a full and complete education.
Exactly. "Music theory" doesn't get to "count" among the other subjects, and it's quite annoying.
Frankly, where I came from, the schools didn't teach anything of anything, so I'd demand the existence of an education far sooner than its completeness
How do you feel about organizations like the Los Angeles Philharmonic supporting contemporary music at a loss. I just attended a 12 hour contemporary music marathon there and it was wonderful. There were several world premieres and great ensembles, and I had never seen so many people at the phil before, and especially so many as young as me, but the tickets were $10. Can contemporary art music survive without large organizations who have the financial padding of downers and endowments?
I am basically a self-taught composer with absolutely no following nor have I had any pieces performed publicly. I write in a variety of genres. Would you suggest sticking to only one or not? I do enter contests and though I didn't win, one of my pieces called "Dreams I Dream" for viola and clarinet was selected for the duet called Violet. I really enjoy your channel and have learned so much from you and Adam Neely. Thanks
My theory is that aesthetics was lost as a value in art after WW2, and concept became paramount. The physical arts, including film, could withstand this change and still retain popular appeal because there's other things to focus on, but not so for art music. The academic snobbery is ridiculous because when you break it down, 20thC+ music only does 1 thing (concept) as opposed the 2 things that all pre-20thC music did (concept + beauty).
With visual media being so popular and accessible these days I think more composers should work with videographers to produce visuals that go along with their music. much like how many classical pieces were originally for ballet or opera. It would also allow for composers to convey more specific concepts or stories as well.
Can anyone let me know what movie or video the clips are from of the different pieces and the audience reacting to them?
There's a composer/conductor in Brevard County, Florida who established the Space Coast Symphony Orchestra, and one of its main objectives is to feature music by living composers. He's been wildly successful at it--audiences flock to his concerts, and composers like Christopher Marshall, Michael Daugherty, and Kenneth Fuchs are often featured and attend the concerts to speak with the audience about their work.
I think the problem here is two fold: One is that contemporary classical music has failed to adapt to music primarily becoming a fixed medium, obviously concerts are still performed and attended but ever since (roughly) the invention of vinyl records musical composition has evolved to exercise new musical ideas in the limits of recording and playback technology. A good example against this would be musique concrete and acousmatic music of the mid 1900's, however, after the initial inception of these techniques most classical composers either continued with performative ensembles and/or haven't caught up with some of the ideas that popular music has arrived from using the same technology (or in some case driving the development of new technology, i.e. drum machines, instrument amplification, multi-track recording, DAWs, e.t.c.). Since musique concrete was first conceived everyone from the Beatles (like you mentioned) to Brian Eno to King Tubby to Miles Davis have taken the idea of editing and transforming sound recordings and expanded upon it in their own way. And this is just one example. Music has changed a lot in the past 100 years and I think classical composers are begrudging of musical techniques that have originated in the popular music world.
The other issue here is a presentation one, classical concert etiquette is extremely rigid and hasn't changed much throughout the years. It's vastly different from the average concert experience of today. It's usually amplified (though full sized orchestras can get to rock concert volumes it's much more dynamic than most modern music), crowds (usually) stand up and applause during the performance is allowed (amongst other things). Even ignoring the performative aspect of it most contemporary classical composers are not concerned with their compositions being in the constraints of the recorded medium. Most aren't concerned with track lengths or album pacing or structure; whenever you listen to a contemporary classical record or go to a concert you are voluntarily going for an experience that's different than what is usual for modern music, which isn't necessarily a bad thing, but as you said the question is in regard to the cultural relevancy of contemporary classical music. And if most people in the classical sphere are ignoring these conventions is it hard to see why most younger people don't listen to Stockhausen?
I tried to make this as concise as possible but I like to ramble a bit so I hope I communicated this effectively, obviously not everyone in classical music does these things and people get ideas and influences from all types of places, but I do think there is a noticeable trend here...
Anyway I think I've typed enough
Thanks for the comments. Both great points. Personally I've always preferred sound that is created by 'puffing blowing and scraping' rather than any form of electronic method, maybe that puts me in an "out of touch" place, I don't know. But throwing that out would mean throwing out much of what I love about this kind of music. Concert etiquette is a tricky one, for music that sometimes needs absolute quiet to fully appreciate, but I've certainly seen it work successfully in less stuffy ways from time to time.
There are some contemporary classical composers doing a lot of these things - Max Richter, Olafur Arnalds, Nils Frahm, and one of my current favorites (though I don't think they exist anymore) A Winged Victory for the Sullen. I think this hits on almost every one of elements you mentioned above: ua-cam.com/video/NEIrihvZxB0/v-deo.html When you read the comments, some people really love it, then there's the "well I took music / composition, and this is all trite crap" inevitable comments too, so modern classical music seems to be shunned by some 'elitists', and also be well hidden away from it's potential audience that might really enjoy it, like I do.
Growing up, I took a LOT of music lessons (violin for 12 years, viola later for orchestra, double bass for band and jazz band in high school and later orchestra too, and organ), and after a hiatus during university and grad school for engineering, I once again currently play in a community orchestra. During the years I was taking lessons (late 80's through the 90's and maybe into the early 00's), "modern classical" seemed to be going through a weird period where anything new mostly sounded like someone dropped the entire percussion section down the stairs, accompanied by some dissonant squeaks and squawks on some irrational time signature from all the other sections. Growing up in Canada, CBC _had_ a "new music" program, Two New Hours, but it was on at a terrible time (late Sunday evening I think), and I remember a lot of what I heard the few times I listened was the variety I described previously, so it didn't entice me to listen often. I mostly listened to traditional classical and jazz (because that's what I was playing at the time). There was the odd modern piece I'd hear that I actually liked, like Marjan Mozetich Postcards from the Sky, which I heard on the radio exactly twice, and didn't catch the name of either time, and it took YEARS to track down what it was, and eventually hear it again (and discover his gorgeous double harp concerto on the same album). It wasn't until recently (last 4 years), and largely due first to slightly more attention on the radio, and more so to youtube and letting it go off autoplaying whatever it wants, usually while I'm at work, that I discovered there's actual 'good' enjoyable modern classical stuff out there. First Arvo Pärt Fratres for strings and percussion (I think it was on the radio, and I literally stopped everything I was doing to listen in awe, then I went and found more of his stuff), then Max Richter Vivaldi Recomposed, which was a great bridge from the traditional to the modern. That really opened the flood gates to so much more. If I play any of this stuff to people that don't have a background in classical music, they just don't seem to "get it". So it seems to me the audience is extremely specialized - someone that has a background or appreciation of classical music, AND doesn't find it "too simple and trite".
Rhapsody in Blue is the most recent classical composition I can think of that's had a wide-spread significant impact.
The Lark Ascending, Vaughan Williams, The music for the deer hunter by John Williams, Jaws music, Psycho, Inspector Morse by Barrington Pheloung, Dambusters Eric Coates, Fanfare for the common man Aaron Copland.
@@IlIlllIllIlIIIll There is nothing wrong in that at all. Good luck to those few composers who make it in that industry.
I am reading a biography of Beethoven at the moment, and nearly every piece has its driving force through the need for money. Then as it is now. The only problem from my point of view is that the opportunities where already shrinking in Beethovens times and have virtually disappeared now. Such that we seem to be ten a penny?
I have a compulsion to write, so what ever happens I will try and find reasons to write. Cheers
What about music used in film .....
RIB is derived from Jazz idiom - so who or what had the "significant impact"?
David, thanks for the video. I have only recently got back into writing classical music again. When I was a boy in the late 1980s and early 1990s I was doing classical music more professionally in America and Canada. Sometimes going around the world playing piano. I hope to write a book on post contemporary classical music later on. Thanks again for the video sir!
Do you have any tips for aspiring composers, where to offer music and such. It isn't really all that clear to me how to actually become a professional composer.
Shostakovich is an amazing medium between accessibility and “progress” that’s written memorable music in the last 100 years.
The thing about Shostakovich is that his accessibility may have been "forced" by the Soviet establishment. I think if it wasn't for that, he would have played more outside...
No he's not. The 8th string quartet is totally overrated. Funny sound effects with stupid ostinatos. Overlong sustained tones.. I simply can't find the richness of part-writing of Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven string quartet writing in Shostakovich. A good film music composer. That's all.
@@classicalmusic210 that judgment is absolutely ridiculous, if you are saying shostakovich dresden quartet is overrated and bad for being effectist and expressionistic you are misjudging a big quantity of 19 to 20th century composers as ravel or Schoenberg. The richness of this quartet (and many other contemporary chamber pieces like verklarkte nacht for example) is in the visceral feel to it. It's magnificently built an arranged obtaining from it's arrangement a harsh and painful sound. The complexity of the piece doesn't just lie on that, the political themes of the piece and the context around it make it even more complex and unique. I personally find beethoven's or mozart's chamber music boring and simple. As I feel that I know that there are objectively well done pieces even if they bore me. Your comment about Shostakovich 8th quartet is extremely subjective and to some extent wrong. You don't really understand Shostakovich.
@@classicalmusic210 is that the only piece you’ve listened to?
Here's to the channel catching up with Adam Neely's!
Well I have not listened to much, but when I stumbled across you channel and found your gateway drugs video I have learned to appreciate it a bit more. I feel like some music does need some explanation to fully appreciate without a formal musical education (which I lack), such as music working as spirals or palindromes or utilising micro rhythms. I also admit I had a generalisation that all modern music was harsh sounding and atonal, until I heard some that is aesthetically easy to like. Anyway channels like yours help me to enjoy it and spread the word!
Could you please tell us where you got those scenes of Stravinsky's "Le Sacre" from? I'd love to see the whole thing, whatever it is! Thank you!
Very interesting, thoughtful and entertaining video, by the way! Good job! 👍👏😊
It was a BBC drama called Riot at the Rite - you should find it on youtube.
David: Thank you for replying, and so quickly, too! I really do appreciate it! Can hardly wait to see it!
Very much looking forward to your future additions to your channel! Thank you so much!
It's important to remember that The Rite of Spring wasn't shocking to people after the first night - on the second night people mostly loved it. And wasn't it more the choreography that upset the opening night crowd, who went in hoping to be shocked?
Correct. it was the dancing that was "shocking" not the music
Personally, when I go to a concert I'm always going for the older pieces of dead composers, never for new ones. I actually am weary of going to concerts that start with contemporary compositions because they end up being so unbearably hard to listen to. I think that says a lot about the state of classical music at the time and I'm a diehard classical fan who likes almost any new (non-contemporary) piece I hear. The music doesn't sound like music, it sounds like some strange experiment, and doesn't feel like anything.
As for me I only go to classical music concerts that primarily feature new music works. I have become bored of music from the common practice era. It may not sound like music to you but it is music to me.
@@almuel what do you especially like about contemporary classical music?
To me, it also sounds too experimental, or just random (if we talk about the same kind of modern classical music). Maybe I don’t understand it (which is quite possible), but to me it feels like the composer had no true inspiration and compulsively tries to generate a new sound that - at least to my ears - sounds new, of course, but very unpleasant. I can’t find beauty in that.
Are there any pieces you can recommend that may change my view?
i'm a contemporary composer, and i try to integrate contemporary ideas into my music while still making the music digestible and meaningful. there's contemporary music to be found that's not mindless noise. unfortunately it's pretty hard to find.
@@marcolengsdorflisten to david bruce's gumboots, it's a triumph
@@VepiumOfficial thanks for the tip!
Hello David. I have a lot to say about this subject as I am a composer employed in academe. However, for now I would just like to say that I really appreciate your thoughtful essay and discussion on this matter.
From what movie is that clip featuring the audience member buzzing the Rite of Spring?
It's from a BBC film, "Riot at the Rite" (2005). The film can be seen on UA-cam.
I would think the vast majority of people get exposed to classical music through the visual arts. Looney Tunes, Star Wars, Ghibli films and the like. This works very well for the few composers who can get attached to a successful movie or TV show. But undoubtedly the vast majority will never get there. But maybe these composers could use a medium like UA-cam to present their works. Of course, there's a lot of hurdles to overcome like the cost of recording your music and the question of if you are going to have a visual accompaniment. The idea of having classical music tied to animation, kind of like Fantasia and music videos of the past, is a dream I'd love to see. But I know that it is far more time consuming and costly to produce than your typical music video for a pop song. Still, there are tons of aspiring animators out there, just like composers. Maybe these two groups should get together and collaborate for their own mutual benefit.
Fixed media does that, @maxis2k. Here's something fun one of your comments reminded me of.
ua-cam.com/video/NU0VvGRelUQ/v-deo.html
I thought a lot about this for my music, because I reckoned having something to look at will keep people more entertained in general, as well as being able to further enhance the musics effects. but as you said most idea's are just way too difficult or time consuming. In the end I settled for an adobe effects animation of the notes, which is atleast doable.
_in my eye Well, Khatia’s bosom is a mite oversized from the ideal, but it does not detract from her sound.
If you can't enjoy the music without visuals then you're not really listening.
Contemporary Classical music, while it has become obscure, has taken on a new home in the film industry. Millions of people love movies scored by Williams, Shore, Elfman, Giachinno, Powell etc and music that has many orchestral/classical influences but has also been mixed with electronic elements like Hans Zimmer or Tom Holkenborg.
I got an undergraduate degree in composition from a school that, as I only learned after I started classes there, was deeply entrenched in the "modern" and "cutting edge" styles of contemporary music. My style was (and largely remains) influenced by film music, but my professors and fellow students largely dismissed any film music outright that didn't have John Williams written on the score (and even then, it was a tenuous acceptance). It felt stifling, and I remember resenting that insular bubble my whole four years there. But now that I'm graduated, not accepted into grad school, and realizing that I actually have zero job prospects in my field, I'm starting to miss that bubble more and more.
I'm music grad (well I will be in several weeks, eek!) and I'm rather lumped into the modern/avant garde etc boat. Recently there was the tectonics festival in Glasgow that was well attended but as you said, many were friends, or students of one another.
Though there were plenty there just to see what was going on.
I think in general (especially in the UK) far too few people are putting on public and accessible events. Often modern or contemporary arts is presented with too much snobbery that it's off-putting to go to anything.
Similarly there are too few shows being put on consistently
I feel there needs to be a new interpretation of the Orchestra and what it consists of in the post-modernist/21st Century idiom. After all, it is a matter of history that Orchestras were constantly added to, in terms of instrumentation, but, with rare exceptions, they have remained largely unchanged for centuries and, indeed, have actually become more inflexible and adamant about their identity.
There is still a pervasive form of classical music ‘conservatism’ that appears to want to dominate any attempts to create anything “new” or (as you said above) “step outside of the bubble!” Unfortunately as the same people (composers and academics) tend to occupy any position of authority - there is an in-built and virtually impenetrable “glass ceiling” to anyone daring to either hail from the provinces or any non-musically academic sphere and, exclusion is enforced via the swift application of the ‘genre-specific’ cookie-cutter.
Lastly. The exclusion of composers not formally educated in music is made even easier now because of advances in the very technologies which would allow provincial composers to actually create and hear their own scores played back to them. I refer, of course, to the VST Orchestra software packages which include a very wide variety of instrument combinations, sounds and techniques. The fact that contemporary Classical Film and Soundtrack Composers like Hans Zimmer has produced his own Orchestra and Percussion samples libraries is testament to both the quality and superb audio reproduction of his samples. Spitfire Audio, Kontakt, Kinokinetic and Miroslav have all produced orchestral sample libraries which span the entire Symphonic and Philharmonic Orchestras and include additional Ethnic and World Instrument libraries and comprehensive choirs and vocal ensembles: all of which can easily be passed-off as publicly ‘real.’
In conclusion. The amateur can sound, at least on the surface, professional. The Glyndebourne and Royal Albert Hall set are never likely to acknowledge Contemporary Classical Music as having the same relevance or gravitas as a Season of Haydn, Schubert, Beethoven or Wagner. Neither are they likely to regard Glass, Schoenberg, Reich or Burtwhisle as anything but an interesting side-bar on the way to an Elgar elegy. As ever, social mobility and class bar the way to the ‘new.’
Those inside the “bubble” do not hear the sound they are making outside...
I'm a jazz musician with a big classical component in my background. My main orchestral instrument is the bassoon though I am primarily a saxophonist. I have the same problems with a lot of contemporary classical music as I have with avant garde jazz and free jazz. For me it's absolutely fundamental that the audience can relate new music they hear to something they already understand. It's no coincidence that the loss of connections with audiences coincides with the discontinuities between styles within the same genre and regions. The changes in trends between baroque and classical, classical and romantic, romantic and impressionist and so on are significant enough to be noticed and to force audiences to adapt but not so big that audiences are completely pushed away. Even moving from the music of Tchaikovsky to Prokofiev to Shostakovich to Stravinsky is a logical and reasonably smooth journey. Many people have limits in their personal taste but the Rite of Spring is far from impenetrable. And it is not a huge leap from there to the second Viennese school. Once you have got used to extreme dissonance, atonality is only a small step away. The problems arose when composers stopped composing music and instead turned to devising new ways of inviting performers to make sounds. When you listen to a piece of Stravinsky or Schoenberg, you can hear the notes and try to imagine what the composer had in mind when putting those notes on the page. The composer has shown precision of intent and real design in the music being performed. But when you hear a piece of Cage, you're not necessarily listening to a piece of music composed by John Cage. Depending on the piece, there's a good chance you're just listening to some performers improvising freely having been invited by John Cage to do so. The same thing occurs with free jazz, with the main difference, apart from the instrumentation and rhythmic elements being that the performers themselves are also doing the job that in contemporary classical music would be done by the composer and receiving the appropriate plaudits for it. But ultimately it's not a composition in the sense that most people understand and that I particularly adhere to, i.e. a prescriptive structure laid out such that even where there is a good deal of improvisation involved the composer's influence and designs are clear and fundamental to the performance.
And unfortunately for a lot of contemporary classical composers, the audiences alienated by the more abdicative creators of aleatoric performance situations, have lost faith and lumped everyone in the contemporary classical world under the same umbrella.
So I for one prefer to write compositions that show a clear progression from past to present. I find plenty of ways to say something new within well established structures and systems by combining my own influences in ways that make sense but have not yet been heard.
A summary of my view on composition would be that if you need to see the score to make sense of what you've heard, the composer hasn't succeeded, but nor has the composer succeeded if a good look at the score can't give you a really clear idea of how the piece will sound.
what's the name of that movie about stravinski and rite of spring?
What is that movie with The Rite of Spring?
In another of your videos you say how you have composed a piece, which would be an interesting example for the video but you cannot share it on UA-cam. I understand the licensing issues but this is an example of how composers are limited by success. UA-cam is where I discover almost all of the music I listen to and I think it is best to have a body of work freely available.
completely agree. that's usually a problem especially for orchestral pieces where old licensing contracts exist with all the players so it's impossible to get round. It's changing in the UA-cam age, but very very slowly. Most composers I know are desperately frustrated that they have often their best pieces written for orchestra and can't share them.
I suspect composers overestimate how much the audience cares about the orchestra players' interpretation. MIDI captures everything that's actually written in the score. I grew up listening to MIDI and tracker music, and I don't see it as worse than live recordings. It might not have the nuance of a great violinist, but it has a clarity and precision that's enjoyable in its own right. A good composition will sound good without needing an orchestra.
"MIDI captures everything that's actually written in the score"
It really doesn't.
If you write weird instructions you should know what they sound like, and if you know what they sound like you can tweak the MIDI note by note until it matches the instruction.
Sorry, but that's simply not true; you can't tweak what doesn't exist. Unless you have an accurate sample of the sound you're trying to emulate, then the best you can hope for is a poor approximation. You could sequence the pitches of a series of multiphonics, say, but simply playing the resultant chords with the correct (untempered / microtonal) pitches is only a very small part of the effect produced by a human performer. There are simply too many variables, which vary - often unpredictably - over time. One of the most rewarding aspects of working on new pieces is the collaboration with the composers. "Can you do X?" "I don't know - let's have a go…" (I firmly believe that the term "extended techniques" should be expunged from all books on instrumentation and orchestration - why should we limit ourselves to a subset of the sonic possibilities of an instrument that was defined nearly two centuries ago?)
How can contemporary compositions be relevant when in most of them, a regular listener cannot remember or formulate in is head 3 consecutive notes of the main melody. How can you emotionally relate to that?
For most people, at best, it’s nothing more than nice noise.
Maybe I’m just being ignorant or limited, but I feel that this is the view most people have. And if taste is democratic, I may be right :) .
Nice noise? Hardly. More like fingernails on chalk board noise. But even that would be tolerable if the music had a message, a meaning that people could relate to.
When art tries to be democratic it becomes irrelevant. Besides I don’t even see what democratic art can mean
It's easily possible to emotionally relate to art that isn't necessarily memorable. However, I'm inclined to agree that memorability is a very nice perk of music. It's like you can take the music around with you, if you can imagine and hum it.
You don't understand this music but it doesn't make it irrelevant.
@@LouisGuillotYT Music becomes irrelevent if no one is willing to listen to it. Unfortunately, most of the people writing music that audiences actually like are dismissed as sellouts while the composers winning a lot of awards are attacked (with some justification) for writing for the academic world.
whats the movie excerpt of the rite of the spring from?
For me, the problem is that it's hard to sample "contemporary serious music", as we sometimes call it out here in California. I've enjoyed some of it very much (most notably Part's Salve Regina, Miserere, and Stabat Mater).
David Lang's "I Lie" is interesting. I've heard it many times.
I know there are more discoveries for me to make. But there's a small market for this "highbrow" music. And so it is not well served by main-stream media. Great new work is not only shocking and unfamiliar, it's invisible.
So, Mr. Bruce, who do you think is especially worthy of the attention of us listeners, aside from the familiars, Ligeti, Glass, Adams, Reich. A list of names would be helpful. I look forward to more of your commentary.
if you are continually thinking about what your audience wants, you will produce pop music. Isn’t that kind of the definition?
No ! popular music can be authentic
@@michelnormandeau-voyer7491i think you're right, but only if, ie, your first music album is born genuine and it's later well received by a large audience, becoming popular.
If your second album is based upon the reception of the first, then it's already popular
I became aware of Samuel Andreyev's UA-cam channel through his drawing attention to one of my favorite musics, that of Capt. Beefheart and the Magic Band. What could be considered a criticism of academic music can also be said for the music of Beefart and Zappa. I saw one of Zappa's first attempts to conduct a sizable orchestra, The Grand Wazoo, a 60 piece electronic orchestra, which I saw at the Hollywood Bowl. This effort was done just after his great successes with Flo and Eddy on the album Just Another Band From LA, which live performances I also saw at UCLA's Poly Pavilion. The Flo and Eddy concert and music was gloriously profane and satirical, which is why at the Gran Wazoo a great number of people walked out. They just weren't interested, they had come to hear people cuss, and it was just Zappa's mechanical conducting style of music they couldn't related to. Zappa may have also set himself up by having the Doors play before him, post Jim Morrison, which was kind of a downer...
I think that we need to see who it is that creates culture, it is the general population that creates culture by their devotion to a manifestation of art, whatever it is. In indigenous tribes, almost everyone participates in the art, whether playing music or dancing or storytelling. And there is a real sense that one can only appreciate an art when one is doing art on some level. Only then can you appreciate the dexterity or inventiveness displayed, even if you can't do it yourself. But Corporate Culture is an imposed culture that rams its wares down the throats of the people. It makes a music that is more or less impossible for people to achieve unless they can buy the toys with which to make it. It has been said that all hit songs are written by two guys, two guys out of 7.5 billion. I think it is a mistake to view success by a Corporate Culture definition of success. That things need to return to values that are more tribal, in Terence McKenna's sense of tribal. I just want to be famous among the people who actually know me, not the Corporate Culture meaning of fame where you are known by a bunch of people who you haven't got a fucking clue who they are. And there is only one benefit for such fame, larger audience means larger income. And such fame has drawbacks that totally cancels out the larger income. If you don't think so, just ask John Lennon... Oh wait... you can't ask him can you...
What were the two movies shown whose scenes depicted averse audience reactions to new art? They look pretty funny without context already, are they worth watching?
I want to say this not as a jab, but for perspective. Classical music has always struck me as an era more than a style. If it wasn't written in the 18th and 19th centuries, it's not classical. I didn't realize I thought this way until I watched this video. And I come from the Adam Neely and 12tone camp. Formal music education, 30 years old.
Thanks for talking about it.
Well people like Rousseau and Lang Lang and all of the concert pianists are introducing people to classical music and Contemporary music will survive if people compose more of it.I compose Romantic pieces but I think some people can give it a shot.
David, I loved this analysis of the contemporary classical scene... As a younger man back in the 80's I was the perfect target for contemporary classical. My mother played piano and introduced me to the classical form starting with Mozart and Bach and graduating to more challenging Beethoven and eventually Mahler and Holst etc. I was ready... my interest level piqued and my ear prepared for dissonance and clutter... I was the prime target. Along the way something happened, I indulged myself in Stockhausen as well as John Williams and found myself lost. The Williams stuff was too derivative and patronizing. The likes of Stockhausen left me feeling like "he doesn't want me to enjoy this.." Williams wanted me too much and Stockhausen chased me away...and that is the conundrum with Contemporary Classical. Those with any self respect feel compelled to shoo their audience off - literally chase them away - and those writing sound tracks and selling contemporary music are busy re-writing Richard Strauss tone poems... Good Luck
Hi! Just for the sake of exploring by myself, who are some of your favourite contemporary composers?
Yes, team up with visual effects or film makers and join the arts together. Kind of like the early Disney Fantasia stuff. And your YT channel is a great way to start! Can someone in the know recommend me a 'must listen' to piece of contemporary classical music? If it helps, my go-to for older is Tchaikovsky
where was the rite of spring scene from?