Why Audiences No Longer Care About Modern Music
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- Опубліковано 12 вер 2024
- This is a clip from the a conversation between composer Samuel Andreyev and conductor Luigi Gaggero. View the full video here:
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Y’all who are equating “modern” with “dissonant” and “dissonant” with ”bad” really need to try harder to appreciate things
Schoenberg: "My music is not modern, it is merely badly played."
"The colors were not good" - Picasso
"The violins suck" - Mozart
"If only there was not the damn tuning!" - Bach
"The actors are idiots" - Shakespeare.
"I wish I had more lead" - Anselm Kiefer.
So, all the modern music composers just forgot about proper teaching then? Or they couldn't do it themselves?
I smell a lot of bikeshedding while Jazz has become true modern music. Just watch what musicians are learning in what order.
I think the problem is the opposite of that claimed here. Most performances of not very good "art" music are pretty good, and often outstanding. The issue here is that the quality of "art" music compositions themselves has plummeted, not always but often. You cannot recover the appeal of a mediocre composition even with the best performers. Of course this is mostly subjective so it's hard to argue one's case.
In the early 19th century , the first performances of the Beethoven symphonies were woefully inadequate . The music was wildly original. and incredibly difficult to play when new . The musicians also had woefully inadequate time to rehearse . It was not until after. Beethoven's death that Francois Habeneck and. the Paris Conservatoire orchestra. were able to devote. an enormous amount of time to. rehearsing them that. the Beethoven symphonies. got. really good performances .
Can’t good compositions survive mediocre performances?
Very very rare. The only composer I feel like that is actually the case is Chopin. Chopin played badly still sounds quite good.
Very convincing conversation. I'd like to modestly add that you can also have a somewhat sloppy rag-tag early or first performance that is nevertheless utterly committed and makes a powerful impression. Mitropoulos relied on a photographic memory, but it could fail him with new and relatively unfamiliar compositions. Still the commitment on an emotional level was undeniable, and you would be riveted.
Just make the shit sound good
exactly. what mental gymnastic is this shit. blaming bad recordings when the music is shitty to begin with
So true
Ah... well, this is why I'm a jazz composer who draws on modern classical work rather than a modern classical composer. The classical world doesn't understand or appreciate the joys of the vagaries of performance. I want the performers of what I write (besides me) to bring their human and musical selves to the performances of it. Sure, I could exercise complete control over the final product, but that would be utterly boring to me. I do agree that any music needs to be played with confidence and if the music is challenging to the performers then adequate rehearsal is a must. I have learned that the hard way. On the other hand I can think of one performance that went totally in a direction I did not want due to lack of rehearsal and the outcome turned out to be great. It was because one of the musicians played with a tremendous amount of expression based on what he was going through at the time. And for the record (!), I wouldn't know a good Webern or Carter recording from a bad one because the music itself is so brilliant. Similarly, Stella by Starlight as a jazz composition is so great that it doesn't require someone like Charlie Parker (although I'm not aware of any versions of it with him) or Miles Davis to convey what it's about. Impressions is entirely different matter. Thanks for posting this discussion.
The difference is simply that classical composers often only get ONE public performance of their work - that's why it matters so much that that specific performance is good. It makes or breaks a career often.
Hmm. I will take your word for it ... but it doesn't speak to the perseverance of those composers. I recall a certain piece written by a prisoner of war that premiered on January 15 1941 in a POW camp @@JonasFaergeman
If you're a composer I do think there is a deep problem with being overly concerned with how an audience will react. Does this mean the expressive and communicative element of your work should be irrelevant? Absolutely not! But there seems to be a commonly held belief that the composer has some sort of moral duty before undertaking a composition to do a conceptual survey on the particular musical tastes, experience and prejudices of the hypothetical "statistical average" concert goer and then try to feed back to him or her "what they want".
Now is this necessarily a bad thing to do in and of itself? Of course not: if done with some craft, skill and taste I myself have enjoyed much of this kind of music. Indeed currently I am exclusively writing mass movements and motets in strict Palestrina style. But if a composer feels instead an inner necessity or compulsion to create something personal to him and believes should be shared then all that he or she should be concerned about is making it to the highest standards that they can, even if this involves using (shock, horror!) "atonality", serialism or whatever modernist technique they feel necessary to realize their vision - yes, even if it leads the majority of the audience to honestly despise the work and consider it bad, random, pretentious, ugly, meaningless or whatever epithet they may choose, which of course is their absolute right!
Many of the above carpings have been used for someone like the late Harrison Birtwistle, but on this statement he made after the "scandalous" Proms premiere of 'Panic' I fully agree: "'I can't be responsible for the audience: I'm not running a restaurant."
Samuel, before you get depressed by the hate in the comments, I think the problem is in the title of video that promisses some kind of general answer. I think the real topic is "How it is important to have full control of production process of your own music." I agree with the point that the recording of bad performance can have devastating impact on the perception of the composition.
Thanks. The comments have been mostly very reasonable. However, a few seem to suggest I'm blaming performers for a lack of audience-whereas the real problem is that the music is no good to begin with. I am not blaming performers for one second-rather, I am expressing admiration for those rare composers who insist upon the highest level of quality and engagement at every level of the process (like Stockhausen), as opposed to those who passively accept the status quo. Obviously, it's a complicated and multifaceted issue. Does that even need to be said? Anyway those who want to go further are invited to view the full video from which this is an excerpt:
ua-cam.com/video/fDjkuZdICNM/v-deo.html
There are many issues here…
Not least the issue of the role ‘art music’ plays in modern society.
Sure - a bad recording isn’t good for a composer. Especially those of which are made from live performances that perhaps are not as strong as a performance of a work with centuries of tradition and understanding that (by and large) classical musicians (frankly) care more about; feel more pressure in their taking on such repertoire etc.
However a composer can always establish rapport with performers they specifically seek out to collaborate with, and this alone can mitigate a great deal of that problem. Of course, once your music is being performed without your knowledge - which is a great thing - you have no influence over how those performances might go, or how they might be received. At least having a good recording you have authorised yourself can give performers who have no contact or relationship with you, something to measure their interpretation against.
I have grappled with the idea that a good piece ‘will sound good anyway’ and have concluded that it is not really true… there are countless examples of Beethoven, Mozart, Bach, Brahms etc which will all suffer without the proper attention given by a performing artist who is accomplished enough to be able to USE the music to express themselves with. And this distinction is no small thing…
A great technician doesn’t mean the music making will be good - only that you might get something precise in the performance. It takes this PLUS artistry to equal an interpretation. Precision is nothing on its own.
Then there’s the issue of what the term ‘modern art music’ even means…
Since the advent of popular music; other forms of what we might label as ‘art music’ fractured and divided into such tiny slivers that there are composers since then who produce work that literally sounds like no one else… some may consider this an achievement, as well it might be; yet as the fragments get smaller and smaller - the chances that there might be cultural touchstones within the music (and therefore a starting reference point for a new listener) becomes equally as unlikely.
And so - whether the work has merit or not - it is alienating, and the only people who will ever get close to it are those whose listening habits are adventurous and/or persistent. And this IMO is not a habit composers should anticipate or expect in most listeners.
Another issue is the institutionally endorsed philosophy of ‘finding your own voice’ to the detriment of lineage; to the detriment of the aforementioned ‘touchstones’; to the detriment of adhering to flesh and bones of what music is - and then you get entire generations of composers attempting to reinvent the wheel; ironically producing remarkably similar sounding ‘abstract’ music which also demands an adventurous and persistent approach from the audience. And then an entire generation of composers who feel let down by audiences for simply following the directives of their highly expensive educations.
I’m surprised that no one in the education systems has pointed out that no ‘great’ composer ever invented anything… innovate - certainly; Bach, Mozart, Beethoven (esp), Wagner, Schoenberg, Berg, Stravinsky, Penderecki… not a lot of what I would describe as ‘invention’… and yet so many young composers seem to feel the need to abandon the tenements of music itself; which is dangerous territory to enter into.
When one enters a modern art gallery - they are perfectly happy to cruise by multitudes of works until something strikes them for whatever reason… are the authors of the ‘skimmed over’ pieces screaming about how no one spends enough time looking at the pieces? Or reading the usually overlong explanations??
Composers should be prepared to programme their music next to standard repertoire if they expect to have their works presented on the same platforms; WITHOUT excuse or the need to preface with detailed explanation OR extra-musical esoteric nonsense.
Or - encourage ordinary people to listen to new music and pay attention to what they have to say about it, and be sure not to tell them they’re ‘wrong’ or that they don’t ‘understand it’… if a composer’s music is not intended for the average listener - a composer should have no expectations of them; however if a composer DOES intend to have their work broadly disseminated then they might consider how composers such as Einaudi and Glass utilise connective tissue in their vernacular.
Melody, harmony, rhythm and form; in a world with so many options… it makes sense to try to understand where something challenging fits in… and it would be a shame to not have Artists capable of challenging audiences without blowing them out of the concert hall with their unrealistic expectations.
nibba done wrote an essay
You state some very good points. Furthermore I should add that there is also some odd notion nowadays that commercial music equals bad music. Writing music without trying to be commercial in one way or another is a modern luxury. Commercial just means that enough people appreciate your music to the point that they are willing to pay for it which in a way should be the ultimate sign that a composer/musician/songwriter is doing right. Making a living as a composer means that you sell a product called an aesthetic experiences in the form of your music and if too few people get an aesthetic experience from your music worth paying for the product is faulty.
@@louduva9849😂
From my experience, as composer of nearly 30 years, or perhaps longer, many of us are not arrogant. I’m one of those people that are simply unpretentious and tactful when it comes to deliver music for performances and naturally Great working environment with musicians. That of course, creates positive energy and great performances as a result and the next day in might be recorded perfectly for ever most musicians today know a lot how to play all kinds of music and that puts for us composes a lot of demands on how it’s notated if you have a clear idea what you want, and can achieve this through your musicians then the audience will grasp it instantly. I have been confronted with less good performances but the music has to stand that. Who knows who will write the next masterpiece that will stand the test of time, you can’t decide that. It just happens.
I am an expert in my field of the study of narcissistic pretentiousness and I thoroughly recommend this video to all true music lovers
I'm sorry, but there's no place in this entire genre for humor.
ironic
Another aspect is to ensure that the archive is also future-proofed as well as the work itself, that the longevity of the work is planned for. It takes audiences years to understand new music, such that Carter's music is still only very niche. There's also a lot of modern music that lacks personality and individuality, basically loud and bland. Culturally we are in a new era of spectacle, so there is no longer a wide audience for intellectually difficult art; we need to form a stronger community and use the great resources of the web to keeo each other going and provide an audience. The crowd funding scheme was a great idea, mine arrived yesterday.
Yes, crowdfunding does genuinely seem like a viable path forward
You are right; Time will ‘filter’ at least some of the best works. Personally, I think that everything is deeply connected: a lot of new music sounds “boring” not because ‘it is difficult’ (although, it IS difficult, like Carter’s music), but because it has lost its ‘roots’ in the society. I mean: Beethoven was very difficult for their contemporaries, nevertheless his music, although it was certainly very ‘personal’, was expressing also some deep ‘needs’, or aspects of the world from which it was arising. The public, in spite of the complexity of that music, could somehow identify with it. Similarly, if we, both interpreters and composers, lose the spiritual connection with each other and with our public, our work will be meaningless ALSO for the minority which still shows ‘interest’ for us. Because, yes, we can still fill a hall with 2000 people (for how long, it’s another question), but already now, the entire ‘setting’ does not really allow, most of the time, to let happen a real transforming experience from that concert. That’s why I believe an urgent ‘re-thinking’ of the connections public-composer-interpreter is necessary…
By the term"stronger community" you mean hardcore leftist ideological automatons...probably like you. In order to find more Stravinsky's the money that incubates true modern classical creativity should be apolitical but isn't.
But will the public ever come around to Carter any more than they did to Schoenberg? or most of the very difficult composers that Samuel focuses on at his channel. To engage an audience to nurture a real connection with the complex large scale forms of classical music...you have to understand what moves people...directness, clarity of expression, a certain degree of simplicity (call it coherence) and there must be emotion in the music. I think the academic world that came to control classical music in the post WWII era gave up on tonality too soon and they relegated it to the past...but there is a continuous progressive lineage of tonal composers that extends from Nielsen and Sibelius up through composers like Robert Simpson and is alive in today in composers like Matthew Taylor, David Matthews and Pedro Vilarroig to name a few. @@luigigaggero
Is it the genre of "modern" music, or is it contemporary classical music, composed in recent years? The first piece I heard from Arvo Pärt was _Für Alina_. I was mesmerized by its simplicity. While I have listened to a fair number of Iannis Xenakis' works, I think of them as experiments, not as musical pieces. Steve Reich's music freely wanders between experiments (_Pendulum_) and accessible (_Runner_, 2022, and _Reich/Richter_, 2021).
Yes, when a composer is concerned about how the piece is performed, then of course the composer must put attention into its performance and distribution. IIRC, Beethoven would rent a concert hall, organize the musicians, and was at the box office selling tickets before conducting. These days we have sample libraries and some pretty good scoring software. If the composer is really worried about not being able to have a good performance, then a performance that is at least passible can be accomplished on a computer.
Because it is noise .
So true
Very true. Be exact with your goal, with your ideas composing and your finished product should show that or (at least) come extremely close to your initial goal. Be exact with what you write and what you want to extract from the instrument/s and follow through with the performer. Without being rude you can still ask for what is right.
That's something I strongly disagree with.
I attended a lot of modern music concerts (obviously I can speak only for my city) and I must say they sometimes have much better attendance than romantic music concerts.
And more importantly modern music is basically the only music my non-classical-music-loving friends (editors, videographers, sculptures, financial consultants, poets, engineers etc) can possibly take seriously and care about. I used to lure them into concert going in many ways. The only music all of them emotionally respond to is minimalism. Others tend to be more responsive to the third avant-garde etc. Two guys went all in into German baroque. And there was only one who continued going to mainstream romantic music concerts after I stopped brining him with me.
Nice anecdote bro
I believe that we need to look to philosophers like Bernard Stiegler and Byung-Chul Han, as well as going back to Hegel and Marx, in order to actually understand WHY art is objectively irrelevant now. Essentially, there are two problems:
1. There is a massive gap between the sensibility of the professional musician, who has learned a repertoire of cognitive skills that allow them to imaginatively participate in the unfolding of a piece of music, versus people who simply do not have the experience to follow music this way. And there is very good reason to believe that only universally available public music education would change these conditions.
2. Social media and the experience of working with contemporary technologies degrades aesthetic experience as such, by putting us into states of distracted "hyperattention" which make genuine aesthetic experience impossible. To be seduced by a piece of music, one must first allow it to hold one's attention, which cannot happen when one merely scrolls through feeds and listens only to brief TikTok length musical excerpts.
Agreed ! The material conditions of our society absolutely conflict with the practices of art creation, outside of perhaps the purely commercial ..
These comments are wild. The most arrogant people you've ever encountered complaining about composers being arrogant. The most out of touch people you'll ever see complaining about composers being out of touch. All of them congratulating eachother for having the opinion that's been strangling public perception of classical music new and old for the past 60+ years.
Every trait you boilerplate reactionaries think makes modern concert music bad has found a passionate audience outside the hallowed concert hall. Everything you think would save modern music has been attempted over and over again for years and years, executed with umbridled passion and expert skill, but more people will show up for Wozzek than them.
Wozzeck? What does 102-year-old music have to do with contemporary music ffs?
The problem is that culture is now, more than ever, a market object. There's a lot of cultural 'fatigue' out there.
It has always been. Think about it, it just shifted the means of production and the audience (and many other things) and therefore changed a lot its expectations
On academic composers: Isn't it unfair to ASSUME that a university ensemble performing an original piece for an audience of 20 people is "not admirable." What if those twenty people had the most brilliant musical experience of their lives? Otherwise, you are simply making a claim that more is always better, which is nothing but capitalist ideology of maximizing profits by selling as many units as possible--this has nothing to do with the artistic pursuit of ideals such as the Good, the True, and the Beautiful.
Just because current conditions of production dictate that every composer must be an entrepreneur, does not mean that the music of a composer who doesn't know how to promote their music or is socially awkward is necessarily.
In fact, I would argue that whether one can ACTUALLY reach an audience is not under a composer's control. There are many poor musicians who are simply unlucky in not having the spiritual and material resources which would allow them to connect with audiences.
I do believe that music is about both connecting people, and connecting WITH people. That is, music is social--but as a social practice, it cannot escape from the problems which plague society at large, and these problems were certainly not created by composers! And it's especially ridiculous to compare the conditions from the 1970's, with contemporary conditions.
Might it not be the case, that Phillip Glass and Stockhausen would possibly be unknown if they started out now?! How many people today even know who Stockhausen is? And what good did those composers do for the world of music in general, besides promoting their personal careers?
What if composers actually worked TOGETHER in SOLIDARITY to create wider audiences, instead of engaging in personal branding exercises? If music is social, and the structure of society is objectively making it difficult to reach audiences, then we should engage in collective, social solutions, not trust to individual entrepreneurship.
Old ears can find it difficult to hear the value of new music.
Old eyes can find it difficult to see the worth of new painting.
True.
And sometimes new music is without value.
And sometimes new painting is, indeed, worthless.
I dont get why you are so fixated on the problems with bad recordings
Luigi was right, the music that many composers write today is just disconnected to the modern audience, its not the problems with recordings
i can guarantee you, writing bad music is far more damaging than having bad recordings
Pure ‘music’ has been drowned by Mass Media Pollution.
“Pure Music” this sounds like something that would have come from the German national socialist party.
Why don’t you stop telling people vague ideas about what to do and talk about HOW to do the things you’re talking about? Videos like this aren’t helpful to anybody in my opinion.
Very interesting subject. As a digital composer, I sometimes wonder how my work would sound if it was performed by human beings. Assuming it could (it's written as if it could be, anyway.) One of several gaps in my amateur study is that I'm not entirely sure what an excellent vs. average or bad performance is. Thus it's difficult to tell if my amazingly precise but passionless "performers" would do a much better job if they were human.
I believe that a good interpretation does not have much to do with “accuracy” (!!). The ‘spiritual accuracy’ is instead crucial. As I write in my last book ("A Natural Gesture"):
“Musical interpretation is, first of all, an encounter: the performer, starting from their own set of values (their interpretative poetics), encounters, precisely, the music
Now, just as in a relationship between two friends or two people who love each other, neither party should dominate or be dominated by the other. If I perform a score only listening to my values, the other (the composer) disappears. If, on the other hand, in the illusion of ‘respecting the composer’s will’, I try to make my personality disappear (aside from the impracticality of this purpose), I only achieve a semblance of what I delude myself to be the composer’s will.
An authentic interpretation, therefore, always recognizes the performer’s poetics as the starting point, within which, through loving listening, the composer’s (different) poetics will resonate, giving life, as if it were a child, to something (the performance) that will resemble both without actually being either.” (pages 42-43)
You know there are always phases in every walk of art or Life. And hopefully we are coming out of one relatively steril phase into something with some spunk in it, life, passion! It's all interconnected. The academic circles, funders, seem to be obsessed with vogue, with bums on seats. Is it any wonder really that their ideas and sterility nurtures in the main second rate attempts at music.
Your average person listens to music to dance to, to sing along to, and to easily connect emotionally with others. Contemporary compositions almost never offer this.
This critique can sound ignorant, but for your average person this is what they look for. This has never changed in all of history, and never will change.
I agree: Whatever form of music, imho it should be functional if it's to be "used" positively by people. Even better I would say is if people make their own music to sing to, to dance to and to share social times with people in their lives with - as opposed to out-sourcing to a professional. For sure if a professional comes out with a beautiful piece and people enjoy it then that works too, but if the music is esoteric or niche or academic almost, well it's inevitably for a narrow function that may not be able to sustain professional production.
I remember hearing someone say, when asked: "Many people say they are not muscial or artistic" and they replied: "Imho, everyone can do music or art, but are not encouraged or given the right opening to do so." It struck me as an interesting insight: Perhaps the best thing would be if children in school were given more encouragement to do simple music and art and to practice this form all through school in a way that can be nurtured thus producing a culture and society with a baseline "skill" in music and more amateur expression for the uses you mention?
Audiences do not care about modern art music for a few reasons.
1. Anti-white sentiment has caused the music styles, rooted in western cultures to be thrown out with the bathwater. To say that one is a fan of western art-Music is often akin to sang that one is a white supremacist in modern society.
2. Fine art in general is a product of opulence. While there is still a lot of wealth in the west, it is more focused and concentrated among a smaller group of people than it ever has been. In this economic climate, The arts become much more practical when more people are thinking about survival. We have a dominance of corporate/commercial art with a specific purpose rather than simply to be.
3. As a symptom of number one and two, the public ear is being driven to simpler sounds. The less refined we can become as a population, the easier it is to produce and sell music to us. Can they get us to consume just one bass drum beat over and over, while somebody says crass things into a microphone? We are almost there already! Attention spans are incredibly short, the desire to study and absorb is almost nonexistent, and I guarantee you most people have already stopped reading these comments I am writing. We must find a way to elevate the public desire to grow and learn and thrive again. This is the only way that more people will love art and music for its own sake.
"Anti-white sentiment" i am now unable to take you seriously.
This lack of interest in the 'New' is affecting all the arts, especially modern art music. Audiences want the 'tried and true' known, However, this
corporate mentality has poisoned much, with it's 'Risk Aversion' Even Punk Rock/New Wave bands adherer to a corporate formula.
i like Takemitsu, Messiaen, Stockhausen, etc., tho.
Chiming in with my own 2 cents on this topic. While I don’t discourage anyone from performing my music live, I also don’t encourage or seek it. Besides the fact that premiere performances can be awfully underrehearsed, a lot of effort goes into it. It’s simply not worth the effort for a one and done live performance. Instead, I focus all my effort on producing recordings where I can exert as much control as possible over the end product.
Could it be the issue that what is artistic might not be beautiful, and vice versa?
I can very much see game musics be played more, and sell better by many orchestra than random modern compositions.
It’s not game music is what people like, there are countless of them, just that they’re more of listening experiences and not artistic experiences most of time.
I think that every professional musician or music director will hear the difference between a demo informal reading, live concert or an edited studio recording. Composers, especially young, shouldn’t worry about that, otherwise they may be faced with unaffordable costs. Some pieces will never sound well and the reason for that is because they may be badly written - that is what a composer should primarily be concerned about. Furthermore, the complaining about musicians may bring you a bad reputation and lead you to the situation that nobody will want to play your music. Finally, if you are lucky, you'll find that some performances sound _better_ than what you were imagining while you were composing.
Thanks. When did I complain about musicians in the video though? I’ve generalky veen very fortunate to work with extremely talented and hard working musicians.
Excellent and very valid points made. One thing to add, perhaps, is that part of this problem could also be the frequently extreme technical demands made of the performers by modern music composers. If your composition demands hand-picked virtuosic performers to properly play your music, you might be removing your piece from the potential for wide circulation.
That is certainly true, although it varies quite a lot. Phillip Glass is certainly much less challenging to perform than Helmut Lachenmann, but both are contemporary composers.
@@samuel_andreyev Have you tried singing Einstein on the Beach?
I was always of the opinion that composers need to diversify beyond composing for the same old acoustic instruments. I think of the work of Isao Tomita, for example. I honestly don't even bother listening to piano renditions of Claire de Lune, just Isao Tomita's electronic arrangement of it. Imagine modern composers in these spaces actually making music for electronic instruments instead of the same old orchestras and the same old tired arrangements. The worlds it would open up! Stockhausen understood this in his time as well. Back then composers understood and appreciated the new avenues they could explore with this technology, and now even the most banal pop music is made with electronic instruments and computers while modern composers are woefully behind. There's an entire untapped world out there with electronic instruments that for some reason composers are averse to. Am i crazy, or does the sound of a piano become grating after a while? Especially when considering very fast pieces with the slight detune the piano experiences as a stringed instrument becomes more pronounced. I listen to
This is honestly a problem in jazz music as well, although not nearly as pronounced, because you are far likelier to find a jazz record that uses electronic instruments or at least electric instruments. Also I'm not actually sure if this is too common, but composing music outside of the 12 tone equal temperament scale is also very welcome and something many musicians outside of these spaces have understood for a while. I'm not even against atonal music, but Jesus Christ let's spice it up with some new instrumentation or production or new ideas of harmony altogether.
I'm not sure there has ever been a time where there were so many professional and high quality orchestras and performers...certainly much better than many 19th century composers had at their disposal (as @robertberger4203 has noted...are the performances bad or has not enough time been committed to rehearsal...I think with classical music the major orchestras and institutions are committed to music of the past, the other side of that is people don't care for or understand the super-sophisticated Avant Garde music that fails to communicate the basics of what music is to most people....
I always think when people complain a midi mock up is not realistic enough in some particular...a good midi mock-up is way better than being performed and recording by some mediocre community orchestra or university ensemble...where any number of things including poor recording quality can be less a than desirable way for music to be memorialized...Samuel is right. But look Beethoven and other composers survived poor 1st performances...sure they weren't recorded...but the thing is they got played again and again and orchestras learned them and committed to them....Orchestras need to start committing to living composers whose work can still find a way to move people...classical music stopped being relevant to most people when they became associated with the past.
Indeed. I had my orchestral stuff played badly and never knew if I screwed up in the writing or if it was the orchestra that sucked. Maybe both, but it's much worse than not having it played at all. Now I know my stuff will not be played, so I'm much more free when composing. I then do it with samplers and imagine what it would be with a real orchestra. It's called "philosophical composing". Or something.
I really don't have much patience for assertions about "all people" and "every single note" - like LG's insistence that "In any case (1) it is clear (2) that all persons (3) who listened to [Furtwangler] could recognise themselves... as a society" These heaped-up collections of certainties make any point, if there is one, perish under their weight. And so when a piece fails to catch on, then the fault has to be ratchetted up to the Universal, the epic, the calamitous. An entire society not wanting to hear its own essential truth etc.
OK. You’ve never met an Italian before 🤣
great video. if you want it done right, you've got to do it yourself (or competently direct those who'll be doing it on your behalf). such a crucial lesson in music--or any art--these days. even if you're not looking for a wider audience, just to be able to truly take pride in the end result of your own work, means you have to take responsibility for every aspect of your art. there's no such thing as 'good enough'--if you feel that way, then you have more work to do.
Yes, that is a good summary of the point I was trying to make. Not sure why this is upsetting for some people 💁
@@samuel_andreyev I believe the contention is the name of the video vs the content. If it had been named something like "serious matters: be careful who plays your music" then there would be no controversy. But it's named "why audiences no longer care about modern music" and frankly I believe your assessment that the music just hasn't been performed/recorded well is wildly off the mark.
@AnonymousUser-bp9no perhaps you are right!
Seems like a bit of a clickbait / misleading title. This is about controlling the recording of your music as a composer, nothing to do with "Why Audiences No Longer Care About Modern Music"
Did not really understand the blue jumper guy's point.
Your music most likely will not be heard by many people at all, regardless of genre, quality and style
People have learned to avoid the label "modern music" because it has minimal, if any, connection to their lives. Composition professors stress, "You've got to sound original!" forgetting that *there is a fine line between "modern, original music" and noise.* The economic/box-office reality is that the biggest payoffs in music today come to those who are still producing works embracing the Common Practice Period. People today already have so much emotional dissonance in their lives: they don't want modern "Dissonance as Music." Thus, to ensure attendance, every performance of "modern" music must be sandwiched between comforting--yet still exciting--performances of Common Practice Period pieces.
I disagree. Proms 50 or so, 2017. Wagner plus Per Nogard 3rd. This second piece is a masterpiece. The performance was incredible and the composer was in the audience. Wagner comes first. It finished and half of the audience walked out without returning to their seats. And it was a piece that can resonate to many, interpreted in a very delicate but grounded way, not eerily. With all the technical difficulties covered. A full symphony. And the audience walked away.
This is a charmingly anachronistic series of points that I am sure have some scoped validity, perhaps more trenchancy in the rarefied world of modern composers -- but the interlocutor also strikes me as ever-so-slightly insane, despite his high affability and manifest intelligence, in providing what appears to me to be a critique on the order of criticizing the string quartet's detuning on the deck of the Titanic...
What I mean is that the radius of concern for the composer him/herself to say something unique but worth saying in 2023 (let's call that R1) is about 100X larger than even getting to the question of interpretation (R2). And there is such a titanic amount of drek, along with a very deep problem of self-consciousness and the exhaustion of Western tonality, that bedevils the modern composer to even break out of neurosis and say something: a) new; b) relevant; c) profound; d) aesthetically well-lettered.
Very few people achieve that escape velocity.
Now maybe part of the problem is we live in a world of 1 million niches now, and there are brilliant talents going unheard. That is no doubt a possibility. But surely part of the problem with his statement that an artist must go out and find really great performers is that firstly both sides of the equation -- composer & performer -- must each sift through a great quantity of silt to find a gem. And it is not obvious that the vetting system is very good through which a brilliant piece may rapidly (or even slowly) find its way to the hands of a virtuoso. (As if somehow one would suddenly be on hand when there are a million new magnum opuses produced each year.) There is no translucently obvious mechanism of meritocratic scoring of art, other than among networks of composers and players who must comb through a very great deal to find each other.
In other words most things written these days are probably improved by random error. There are tens of thousands of composers that will dwell on the shape of a note head precisely because they are are capable of precision but not accuracy. (It's easy to OCD about the shape of a phrase in the musical Cats without it bearing any resemblance whatsoever to when Beethoven troubled over the Hammerklavier.)
No doubt this interlocutor could have zoomed in on these concerns with great acuity is well, and that was not the locus of conversation. I just find it rather sweetly charming that there are so many aesthetic elephants in the room. Not least, how very many people in music think they are really good when they are really not. But further (tragically) how few are really good but do not network well.
Even the examples he cites (Webern etc.) are telling for their high-prominence paucity of being century-old names. He goes into the 60s some, but the few well-known names he can give betrays the problem of "new originals in composition" that has bedeviled classical music since Mahler. I.e. it's hard to cite well-known composers of quality who aren't well known lol, and there aren't many to cite that would be instantly recognizable beyond the cognoscenti in the way that the common person would instantly recognize the name of Johann Sebastian Bach.
Also, I am not sure the gentleman is right that there is any longer a "listening public" in the sense of a coherent aesthetically literate bloc who receives new classical music and gauges it carefully against the weight of the centuries. This is rather on the order of saying there is detectably substantial reading public that would be capable of taking notice of a new Shakespeare. Perhaps. Or perhaps in the incoherence of our moment, the niche explosion and tonal exhaustion, we are in some very dire post-postmodern straits...
As a vocalist, I can keenly feel the lack of the sublime in modern composition. Song cycles are not beautiful anymore, they do not speak to me on a deep level. Instead they are janky, rough, barely singable, and a chore to listen to.
I’m curious: which song cycles are you thinking of, specifically? Say, ones that were written in the ladt 10 years?
Performance of the rhetoric of a piece has to be done with inflection unless a flat affect is called for. Otherwise, it won't go any better than reading something out loud with incorrect empasis.
I have a set of 3 CDs on Sony of Boulez's complete Webern, recorded in 1967-1972. I'd be curious how Samuel - or anyone else - thinks these stack up against Craft's second set, as these are the only performances I've heard so far.
The Craft set is 5,000x better! Get that instead!
@@samuel_andreyev Oh, thank you!
@@samuel_andreyev Is that the 4cd set that is published by Sony Classical?
@@NavelOrangeGazer Unless I'm mistaken, he means the Naxos ones with the Philharmonia Orchestra. They've got white covers & art pieces on the front. The Sony set has the Craft recordings from the 1950's.
Boulez re-recorded a lot of Webern for DG.
Moral of the story: be rich.
How is this your takeaway?
@@samuel_andreyevYou missed it. Oh my.
What is that thing he is holding?
Looks like a printed 3D shadow of a 4D hypercube
I agree, that two performances of the same piece can sound totally different and have completely different effects on the listener. But on the larger scale I believe most people wouldn’t even like the best possible performance of most modern pieces. To me modern classical music reflects the current zeitgeist very strongly which leads to overwhelming chaos and dissonance in the music. The world is in a very bad state. People are egocentric, greedy and hypocritical. Looking in a mirror and seeing ugliness isn’t very pleasant. But still you can find very moving and beautiful parts within that music as there is always hope. But I think most people like to live in a wholesome musical fantasy world full of consonant harmony and self delusion.
One performance or one recording of a piece tells you everything you need to know about the piece. Sorry.
User 16:18 2023/12/25
"I think we need to deeply analyze why contemporary music composers insist on atonality. Is it simply a matter of elitism?"
GPT4 16:36 2023/12/25
"The reasons why contemporary music composers adhere to atonality are complex and multifaceted. It's simplistic to attribute it solely to elitism. There are various factors to consider in their adherence to atonality:
Musical Exploration and Innovation:
Atonal music allows for new musical expressions beyond the traditional frameworks of tonal music. Many composers are interested in atonality to expand the language and possibilities of music.
Pursuit of Artistic Freedom:
Atonality offers composers greater artistic freedom and is appealing to those seeking liberation from traditional harmonic rules and forms.
Cultural and Social Reflection:
Many 20th-century artistic movements, reflecting social and political changes, view atonal music as part of exploring the era's instability and new aesthetics.
Personal Expression:
For composers, atonal music can be a means to express personal feelings and thoughts, projecting unique emotions and perspectives that traditional musical languages might not convey.
Influence of Music Education and Academia:
The emphasis on atonal and contemporary music in music education and academia can also be a reason for composers' adherence to atonality, influenced by educational programs and academic trends.
Aspect of Elitism:
In some parts, atonality is perceived as a symbol of elitism or status within certain musical circles. However, this is just one aspect of the motivation for atonal music and does not represent the whole picture.
The reasons behind contemporary composers' insistence on atonality are rooted in each composer's artistic goals, personal aesthetics, cultural background, and the spirit of the times. Considering these factors comprehensively is key to understanding their adherence to atonality."
I loved music. Im not sure what it is anymore. I think music died between 2017 and 18.
I musta missed it... what's the answer to the question in the title of this clip?
There is an answer, but it’s so cringe you must have missed it 😂😂
Let’s be clear people love modern music in fact modern music is what most of the world listens to. People just don’t like the modern music your putting out because it’s entirely removed from there lived experienced.
Beautifully put! I'm open for an interview.
"Why modern in this case? It grows old as soon as born, for it comes into being contaminated with dry rot." - S.V. Rachmaninoff. On the other hand, there's music of Jeremy Soule and Christopher Tin.
Over half a century ago, 'modern' composers came out and said they didn't give a damn what the audience thought about their music. Tell me again why potential audiences should care about what composers write.
They didn't all say that. Boulez, for example, worked very hard as a conductor etc to convert people to contemporary classical music. Boulez believed that serial music was the next logical step and that the public would catch up. His conducting work was to facilitate that. He was wrong and that invalidates the claims he made for that music but it doesn't invalidate the music itself which, for some of us, takes us to an amazing place that no other music does. The other thing Boulez overlooked - in my opinion - is that from the mid 1960s onwards - maybe earlier - rock musicians started producing 'arty' music. If things like Eno's 1970s work, Berlin era Bowie etc contribute to arty music, what is left for contemporary classical composers to bring to the party? To paraphrase Stravinsky, it's not a matter of how good it is but of who needs it. That seems to me to be where we are now.
@@Davidjpower Boulez dismissed Sibelius, who was very popular with audiences, and refused to conduct him. Boulez tried to force audiences to listen to serial music, whether they liked it or not. He knew what was good for them.
One sleazy editor changes the title of one essay in a proto-clickbait attempt to move magazines and every composer for generations to come has to deal with the backlash.
This is the mark of a healthy culture
While some of what you say is true (I don't disagree with your warnings to composers), I do think that the assessment of why audiences don't care is wildly off the mark; and judging from the responses elsewhere in the comments, I get the feeling that offering an alternative view is going to be unwelcome, and since no one reads long YT comments anyway, I'm not sure it's worth offering an alternative. But despite that, I'll offer an alternative in the shortest possible way I can express.
Composers aligned themselves with revolutionary, elitist, and life-destroying philosophies of ideologically possessed, parasitic institutions which over decades (and now centuries) have sought to subvert and destroy the cultures of their host countries. The revolutionary period is fundamentally gen**%@*cidal. Anything the people valued in their cultures they were told to hate, reject, and destroy -- and if hatred, rejection and destruction are what they've been taught, to the point they eliminate their own past and culture and identity, why should it be any surprise they then reject the substitute culture being foisted upon them? Selfishness, godlessness, hatred and bitterness is at the heart of the philosophy of this revolutionary culture, and the artwork that has been generated as a result of it unsurprisingly reflects those values -- and music, being the art especially nearest to direct emotional expression, unsurprisingly generates disgust and recoil to those asked to swallow the poison pill of cultural self-destruction. It is anti-art, designed with the express purpose of rejecting everything which came before. It has no connection with their daily lives or cultural affairs, it is made purely in a vacuum.
I frankly was on the path to becoming a college music professor, but that abruptly ended when the sneering elitist culture became too clear to me to continue in it further -- I had a fellow student speak with contempt about "uneducated" musicians (pop, folk), directly expressing that the reason he was doing this type of art was due to rejection of them. At that point, I had enough and stopped pursuing my doctorate. Why should the people listen when its obvious that the artists and institutions from which they get their funding hate and look down upon the people for whom the artwork is supposedly being made?
Totally agree, a based comment, thank you man
Most people do not care for dissonant music.
How many tons of paper per year would be needed to print the unperformed scores of the world's art-music composers? Clearly this hermetic research requires no audience more than the researcher herself. Relax with it, kids. The journey is yours.
What these guys consider bad is probably still in the top .01 percent of musicianship lol
I can't imagine the Bartok string quartets being played by anyone else but the Fine Arts Quartet. Every other version sounds effeminate.
Inappropriate title. Bad performances ruin any music of quality. Bad music can be slightly improved by great musicians, but will not stand the test of time and repeated listening. Clickbait.
Jazz is what modern music aspired to be.
Perhaps the reason why modern audiences don’t care about modern music is that the music is terrible, sounds like random sounds put together or a thought of a crazy person. Composers truly are extremely arrogant and egocentric nowadays, blaming excellent performers for “not understanding the depth of the piece” and claiming that the performers are the only reason why their music is so unpopular. It’s pathetic. The music is simply bad and nobody asked for it, that’s why nobody listens to it.
Funny, no one asked for your comment either, and it comes across to me as the terrible random thoughts of a crazy person, maybe I just " don't understand the depth of your comment". Curious
@@splorkon Your comment history seems to be rewritten snarky replies, not original comments or thoughts.
So what music in your mind "is good"? Dismissing for the moment your ad hominim..
@@JarrettWalksOttawa I try to match the genius I'm replying too ♥
"or a thought of a crazy person" funny, a few years ago I saw a deeply moving performance of Pierrot Lunaire, and what made it so moving was that it so convincingly portrayed a woman going through a schizophrenic break, exactly as the composer had intended.
I havent watched the video as it's bedtime but on the face of it that is an absolutely ridiculous title and smacks of someone living in a bubble no offense.. cheers
Taylor Swift made 2 billion dollars from her tour, biggest numbers ever from any artist.. just a very mainstream example, check out the dance music world.
You might consider watching before commenting so that you have some idea what you are reacting to.
Much modern "Classical" music is dissonant claptrap, like modern art it exists only because of public subsidy ..... something that also persisted in the Classical period, but back then the dispensers of the money and their advisors had and exhibited "good taste" which produced art that people enjoyed listening to or looking at.
How I wish we could re-invent the virtues of good sense and good taste rather that just following the idiot herd.
Dissonant claptrap is a bit of an oxymoron 🤣
I can only speak for myself but some atonal music unlocks things in me that no other music does - in the same way that, in my youth, Kafka, metaphysical period de Chirico and a lot of the surrealists did. For some reason, nearly all my favourite atonal music was written before 1975. Make of that what you will!!@@samuel_andreyev
The music is just too weird and chromatic. If it had any semblance of the beauty of the romantic era then people would listen. People can’t write like that anymore though. Modern composers are simply not comfortable unless they’ve produced a mess that no one understands.
You make a very dangerous oversimplification. Just by citing living composers like Philip Glass, John Adams and Einaudi (yes, Einaudi) one can see that the "modern music is just atonal garbage" is unbased and untrue. Most young composers today actually work in tonal ways.
@@igorkreszow8983those are tonal but not nearly as aesthetic as music from romanticism and before
I agree, but there is a revival going on right now with discovery of old method that trained old composers to make such music (italian partimento, solfeggio, counterpoint etc.).
Very true
"No this sounds too good, my schoenberg appreciation group chat will hate it"
So much hate about modern music… he is not blaming the performers or saying everyone should listen to then, but literally just that a successful composers job is more than composing.
Also there is this wide dismissal of attempting to understand or find something redeeming with is very sad. To me, a lot of the really intense hatred of modern music comes from a combination of jealously and projection
Delusional nonsense. No one is jealous of these people. If there were anything enviable about these people, music professors wouldn't need to scrounge around for a pittance living among 3-4 part-time jobs, nor would their once-or-twice yearly concerts be nearly empty save the 5-10 students who made up the audience. Pitifully detached from reality.
It's mostly people who are arrogant and refuse to concede that there is music they don't understand but which is appreciated by many.
Yes modern music is most of the time not the most accessible, but so is classical music to someone who only ever listened to pop.
"a combination of jealousy and projection" he jealously projected
art...is dead!...everything was absorbed by the new opera, that is...cinema...the domain of the unquestionable moving image.
I fear that this is not the problem, since also cinema -at least, the real cinema- is dead. Exactly like ‘classical’ music, after a first great beginning (FW Murnau, F. Lang…) and a splendid maturity (Bergman, Bela Tarr, Tarkovsky…), today, who watches those films? As few people as those who listen to modern composers!… The ‘success’, for the cinema, is (with little exceptions) only for low-level mass-market productions… exactly like in music. So, I believe that the problem touches both forms of art, and it must not reside in a problem of “genre”, but elsewhere...
@@luigigaggero and the main point is that musical art in this case and coupled with technological advances, is a spiritually difficult horse to tame, it is as if the latest processor invalidated any story about its very existence, what values can we create about this ephemera? cultural position,....result:..nothing is worth much!...,if we anchor ourselves to the past,possibly,we will save our soul!
Off topic but I hope France continues its compassionate immigration policy! 👍
Lol
If the music is so bad that it has to be carried on the back of the performer...then your music is bad. LMAO composers are so arrogant and conceited.
Play Mozart poorly and it will sound awful, trite, and childish. Much like your comment
This is very stupid.. all music is "carried on the back of the performer" - from machaut, to kreidler, to taylor swift, and everything in between.
the problem is that even great music, modern or ‘classical’, can sound -if not exactly ‘bad’- at least meaningless. The problem is the spiritual connection, the spiritual understanding of the interpreter which plays that music: if the performers do not really ‘encounter’ the music they are playing, it will be very difficult for the public to feel its deepness…
Good music will still be good even when it’s not played. The performance has nothing to do with the quality of music. Bad music will be bad even after an excellent performance of it. Based comment!
@@splorkon No, it won't sound awful at all. 'Modern' music/noises always sounds awful even played by the best musicians.
So by "modern music" you're actually referring to a dead artform played on ancient instruments that society left behind because it's boring AF (yes; you're going to have to look that up, Mr. I'm Part of the Contemporary World, but do you know how?).