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I love modern music but what do you find annoying?

ALL modern music? With no exceptions whatsoever? Everything from Pärt to Ferneyhough, Adams to Boulez, Jenkins to Barrett (now there's a question for those from Abertawe!), Reich to Hespos, Matthews to - er - Matthews? Hmm. One might answer your question with "anyone who appars to lack discrimination in it"?...

Here are two annoyances:

Composers who claim that nothing more can be done with tonality because so many composers have used it in the past, so that it is now exhausted. You might as well say that no more poetry can be written in English for the same reason. It just shows a lack of imagination.

Composers who claim to "reinvent musical language" with every new piece. For crying out loud!

Entirely agreed.

In fact there are many good and worthwhile modern composers working today. It's a pity their thunder is stolen by a small minority of Look-At-Mes!

I am also sick of works with pretentious aren't-I-jolly-clever introductions by the composer, viz "In the end, the piece is about a foregrounding of the process of translation rather than the result of that process.  It addresses the way in which meaning and content are transferred and embedded and examines the phonetic aspect of that transference and embedding.  It explores the way in which we understand meaning and the ways in which meaning can be inferred even through the absence of stable, codified grammar, syntax, and even words.  The piece explores the instability of word boundaries, using common morphemes and phonemes to shift between languages and modes of syntax to undermine and destabilize the intricacies of linguistic codes."

As Peter Brook said in The Empty Space - if you find you need to write a program note to explain what you've done, then you're wrong. The longer the program note, the more wrong you are. All artistic work must make its full impact without recourse to extraneous explanations.

Yes, those will do for starters! Why in any case would a composer necessarily work - or even consider that he/she might be expected to work - at a piece from the principal premise of "doing something with tonality" (as if to prove some kind of unnecessary point) rather than just getting on with the business of writing the piece and if it embraces tonality in any which way then so be it?

I do not know the origins of the example that you quote but have read plenty more similar and similarly wearisome "explanations"; if I could care less, I would feel a wish to ask the composer how in particular the E flat clarinet multiphonic on page 14 of the score or the violin sul ponticello tremolando glissandi on page 30 of the same did any of those things, albeit without the slightest hope or expectation of an intelligent, let alone informative, answer.

Brook was right, of course - as indeed was Delius many years before him when observing (in an article entitled At the Crossroads in what I believe may well have been the first edition of the short-lived English journal The Sackbut in 1920) that "music that needs "explanation", that requires bolstering up with propaganda, always arouses the suspicion that, if left to stand on its own merits, it would very quickly collapse and be no more heard of".

That "music begins where words leave off" may be an overworn cliché does not mean that it is devoid of good sense - indeed, I've often thought that, if I could say in words what I aimed to convey in a piece, I'd write the words instead of the piece - but the kind of thing to which you draw attention here is a case of words beginning before the music has even had chance to start off. When asked years ago by BBC R3 to give some kind of account of what lay behind my third piano sonata in advance of its broadcast première I seem to recall saying that it was around 15 minutes long and in one continuous movement (I had nothing else to say about it as I not unnaturally or unreasonably expected the pianist to "say" all that there was to be said) - and, as the work actually played for 17 minutes, I didn't even get that right!

It's the same in rehearsal; the less I feel obliged to say to any performers, the better, preferring as I do to sit quietly in a corner and just listen to them bringing to life what I've tried to do and, fortunately for me, this is what has usually happened in such circumstances (and there can be little more annoying - since annoyance is part of this thread topic - than a composer who doesn't know when to shut up and let his/her performers get on with it).

Without wishing to sound churlish for the sake of so doing, it's sometimes hard not to suspect that such circuitous, circumlocutory, abstruse verbosity as that in the example that you quote might almost have been intended to cover up the possible vacuity of what it purports to describe and/or explain.

I think that the fact that such practice is rather more widespread today than was once the case (although the Delius example from almost a century ago demonstrates that it's nothing new) has much to do with those areas of musicological practice that depend for their very existence upon the wilful creation and development of largely impenetrable verbal precepts, structures and pseudo-philosophies that one might argue have scant impact (let alone use) outside the ever-decreasing (if only!) academic circles within which they are propagated by those whose principal interest appears to be writing mainly for their peers about things that have little if anything to convey about music itself, almost as though music exists for them primarily as a breeding ground for it rather than in its own right as something to communicate whatever it does to listeners; this sort of thing has expanded into a kind of sub-profession of its own over time and sadly shows little sign of waning.

I had exactly the same suspicions myself.  The piece itself may, or may not, be a worthwhile composition. The wordy apologia for it made by its composer does indeed cause much doubt.

Quite. As a matter of interest, are you prepared to divulge the author/composer's identity, given that you have provided an extensive quote from him/her?

I love any number of modern composers, what I hate is electronic amalgamations named "compositions", most minimalism--if it's minimal, did it need to be written at all?--the abuse of instruments by "extending" them, i.e, turning the beautiful clarinet family into duck callers, using piano strings (and cabinets) as a percussion instrument or as an untuned harp (good grief, we have harps, tuned, even) and having somebody scream in the middle of a piece as if his or her neighbor just shoved.......
But mostly, any combination of musical sounds, tonal or atonal is always worth at least a listen for me, and if it doesn't make me happy I may not make it to the end. And if it does make me happy, I will file it with Beethoven and Brahms, et al. for further listening.

I think the composer had better be anonymous in this example.  

I don't criticise the composition itself, but the fulsome apologia for it  :)

I didn't mean that one answer fits all. I meant was there a specific thing that annoyed you with a certain composer.

Incomprehensible or obtuse program notes.

Not exactly program notes. I mean pseudo-intellectual agendas advanced for the works aimed at painting the audience as fools who fail to understand the depth of the composer's intellectual processes.

Aka The Emperor's New Clothes.

The same can be said of pieces which are, for example, alleged to be musical realisations of Mandelbrot fractals. Disliking such pieces would be... well, like thumbing your nose at Mandelbrot, wouldn't it!  And who would ever do that?  ;) 

No mention of exactly, errr, HOW the fractal was turned into music....  'natch!

Actually in fine arts most of these texts are generated automatically, you know? ;)

http://www.playdamage.org/market-o-matic/ (http://www.playdamage.org/market-o-matic/)

OK - all understood!

Your reference here reminds me - perhaps inevitably - of the postmodernist generator (see http://www.elsewhere.org/journal/pomo/ and links towards the bottom of each piece to the next automatically generated piece of self-confessed meaninglessness); OK, of course it's easy to poke fun at something like this which was constructed specifically to poke fun at the kind of pseudo-intellectual academic witterings that can be randomly generated by its intended use (and I have no doubt that Delius would have fallen out of his chair with laughter had he lived to witness such examples), but what's more seriously worrying is the sheer paucity of material distance between this kind of thing and the descriptive pseudo-explanatory hogwash such as that which Neil illustrated upthread, be it in the guise of programme notes or anything else that might be in danger of being read or heard by listeners to the music to which it is attached.

In the context of all of this - and to seek to answer the question posed in the OP - I might suggest that one of the most irritating things is when a composer in interview (or otherwise) opines "what I was trying to do is..."; he/she shouldn't have been "trying" to do anything at all but instead actually doing it to the best of his/her ability. Can anyone really imagine Busoni starting off from the premise of "what I'd like to try to do is write a really big piano concerto that explores this, that or the other series of paradigms and places into focus the various possible hierarchical relationships between piano and orchestra and, towards the close, betwen soloist, orchestra and male chorus"? - or Mahler thinking "whilst all of my symphonies to date have sought to traverse a journey from darkness to light, my sixth will be different in that its exploration of the various positives and negatives of life will arrive at a hard-won - but really lost - conclusion in which the latter are predominant"? - or some such nonsense? God forbid! (as He or some else did)! The two composers, like most others with any integrity and professionalism, were quite simply far too busy writing their music and, in so doing, providing their own "explanations" in that music. I do not wish to sound unduly trenchant about this, but the purpose of a composer of music is to compose music...

"Buddy, can you spare a paradigm" was a phrase that used to occur to me when faced with examples of such codswallop; might Delius, in a parallel situation, have thought twice about writing A Walk to the Paradigm Garden...

This is so, so true, and not just about music, but virtually any art form, especially poetry. If you can reduce a poem to a short explanation of its "message", you don't need the poem. As Pound said, "Messages are for Western Union".

Incidentally, on the subject of abstruse programme notes, back in the days when I used to hang out with more musical company than I do today, I occasionally wrote bogus programme notes for new pieces when the composer didn't want to supply any. They were parodies much in the style of the drivel quoted above, but always with a few giveaway cues that the text was not serious (such as a completely fatuous and banal ending - take Neil's example and add at the end, "The piece also was inspired by watching Milwall playing Scunthorpe").

That could be for a new work by Shostakovich, though, couldn't it?(! - well, substitute Rangers for the former and Celtic for the latter and...)...

The human voice.

Why? And only in "modern music" (whatever that might be)?...

I am intrigued as well.  Why the human voice? Strictly speaking it is nothing to do with modern composers.

Specifically speaking it isn't - but strictly or any otherwise speaking, it's surely to do with composers of all eras.

e.g. Boulez

"e.g."? An example of what, exactly? And what about the "human voice" question which you appear not yet to have answered?...

Sorry, I am really confused.  How did we get from the 'human voice' to 'Boulez'?  Is that your answer or are we talking about a different subject?

Ahinton, surely you're not blaming the 'human voice' for the annoying things about modern composers, are you? (Or maybe you mean the other way around - I am totally confused!)

I have no idea of the answer to that question!

Evidently! No, I'm not blaming anything or anyone for anything; I merely questioned what was meant by the reference to the human voice, which I had not personally raised...

I am guessing that what Maud means is that she doesn't like modern music featuring the human voice, and Boulez's in particular. Therefore she finds modern composers annoying when they insist on writing vocal music.

If that is indeed the case, actually saying so in as many words wouldn't exactly have come amiss, although it might be more enlightening to have an opportunity to discover some details as to what it is about which contemporary vocal writing that apparently attracts such a seal of disapproval.

That said, I have to admit that the very premise of this thread strikes no chord with me; leaving aside who you or anyone else might classify as "modern composers" (and there would be little likelihood of arreement on that unless, at least for the purpose of this particular exercise, it were decided that the term would apply solely to living ones), it would be as hard to perceive anything like a commonality of annoyances that would be deemed peculiar to such composers and not to other composers or indeed to anyone else. Even the example cited and commented upon above - namely that of writing abstruse and sometimes overly loquacious verbiage about their works, how they came about and what they purportedly sought to achieve in writing them - is very far from common to all living/modern composers, even though it can often grate when it does occur.

I think it not unreasonable to suppose that the original poster did not actually mean ALL modern composers, as if they could be reduced to a homogeneous block. If one reads the question as "What are the most annoying things that modern composers sometimes do?", then it may be fairly asked, and also puts the blame on the act rather than the actor.

It might also be interesting to generalise it by removing the contentious word "modern". Was Strauss a more annoying person than Babbitt? Discuss.

Or perhaps don't discuss.  ;)

"Annoying" to whom? For which very reason (among countless others) no, indeed, please DON'T discuss!...

Babbitt enjoyed a bit of jazz. Schönberg deeply respected Gershwin. My teacher Searle (whose centenary occurs today) loved the Second Viennese School and studied with pehaps the most radical of its members but also adored Liszt, Alkan, Busoni, Szymanowski and Sorabji.

Really - who "annoys" whom?...

Do you think Schoenberg really respected Gershwin? I think it all sounds a bit patronising.

No, I don't. I know that he did. His eloquent and moving remarks following his younger colleague's death speak for themselves and I do not believe for one moment that they were insincere - and let's not forget also that Gershwin funded the world première recording of Schönberg's Fourth String Quartet and so the respect and more was likely mutual.

Schoenberg also rejected him as a pupil. 

Everybody speaks nicely about people when they are dead!

So did Ravel but he did so in a very complimentary and not dissimilar manner; each seemed to feel as though Gershwin should find his own way to develop and, after all, Gershwin was getting very interested in many kinds of music that would seem quite distant from what he had immersed himself in during his youth; he was apparently most enthusiastic when attending the US première of Wozzeck, for example, according to the person sitting next to him on that occasion - Elliott Carter. Gershwin attracted accolades and encomia from people whom one might asume were outside of his world well before his untimely death.

Is it not the case that Gershwin asked Stravinsky to take him on as a pupil? And that Stravinsky replied that it would be better if he were to be taken on as Gershwin's pupil?

But was it The Most Annoying Thing That He Did As A Modern Composer?  [Discuss]   :D

I would contend that one of the Most Annoying Things Which Modern Composers do is writing in absurdly small note-values...  as though writing in 32nd-notes implies some kind of great speed? 

Worth bearing in mind that breves were so-called, because they were the shortest notes of their era!  Or do we really believe that music in the thirteenth century was incredibly slow? ;)

Interesting points both! 32nd-notes have their place, but yes, certain composers seem to make their already complex music seem more complex by reason of the manner in which it is notated. Why?

I am reminded of Satie's "Vexations" - if ever there was a piece deliberately intended to be annoying, that's the one. The very title of the work proclaims it. The score is littered with completely redundant double sharps and double flats just to make it harder to read.

Stravinsky asked him how much he earned.

Why not. Why should composers use the most common place notation all of the time? Bach used a lot of 32nd notes. I never heard any complaints about that.

I don't know what "the most commpn place notation" is and did not in any case inveigh against the use of 32nd notes; if you though totherwise, please check what I wrote on this; many thanks. I've used 32nd notes myself, as have many.

Mr. Hinton's post is regrettably based upon a false premise. Schönberg did not compose anything worthwhile after his 1908 string 4tette, and certainly he could not be said any longer to be a "composer" by the time he reached the Americas. Nor do I think there have ever been any really worthwhile native composers in that part of the world. Since neither of these two characters was a true composer at the time they were playing lawn tennis in the Cali-fornian sun-light, Mr. Hinton's post is simply off topic.

More generally the war disturbed perceptions of value throughout Western society, so much so that of all the men who have since set themselves up as "composers", only around fifteen per centum actually have been or are - considerably fewer than Mr. McGowan's estimate above. The most appropriate word for the rest is perhaps "pseuds" (to a greater or lesser extent). Etiemble explained the phenomenon well in his Enfant de Chɶur.

Problem with multiple quoting - it takes the top quote as being the one for all of them.  I didn't know it was going to attribute it to you, ahinton, sorry.

I can't agree with you on any of these points. In fact, Schönberg did his best work after 1908. He is also a significant German song composer, comparable to Wolf,  Richard Strauss; maybe not quite in the same league as Mahler.
Native Americans are American Indians as far as I know! George Crumb is an excellent example of an American composer who could easily cross the Atlantic. If you are into modern music, there are whole channels on YouTube of similarly talented American composers. Not many countries around the world have generations of great composers. Austria, Germany that's about it. America has a recent history and a fair share.

It is not based upon any such premise at all and I did not refer to Schönberg's own music in it since the subject was his respect for George Gershwin (and vice versa, for that matter). YOu opinions, to which you are or course entitled, are, I imagine, shared by few; I agree that much of Schönberg's best music was written in his earlier years but your suggestions about his later work and the mature music of Gershwin are so far off the mark as to be beyond risible, their absurdiy being neatly enhanced by the unnecessary yet typically Grewish hyphenations introduced into "California" and "sunlight".

It disturbed far more than just that

In your opinion - and what about the wmone composers of whom you omit mention?

To you, perhaps - ones like Peter Maxwell Davies, I seem to recall from another place; ah, well, let me take my rightful place among them, then...

I don't agree that Schönberg did his best work post-1908 any more than I believe that what he did during that time is of the small amount of significance that Member Gerard attributes thereto - and he was of course Austrian, not German - but what's all this to do with "modern composers" when Schönberg's been dead for 64 years?(!)...

It may well be that the most annoying thing about modern composers is their attitude to music of the past . . .

Just an aside to the Gershwin/Schoenberg discussion
www.youtube.com/watch?v=1J1WixuXYWQ
A 1-minute recording of Schoenberg speaking after Gershwin's death.

I enjoy Vexations also.

Many thanks for this; I've heard it previously but it's good to have it posted here.

Arnold Schoenberg and George Gershwin were connected by profession, religion (both born Jewish - Gershwin's Russian name is Gershovitz) and locality (both lived in Los Angeles). Despite the kind words, I don't think they had much else in common.  In musical taste, musical upbringing and musical outlook, they were polar opposites.  I think the warmth of the epitaph is mainly out of respect for a fellow musician and religious fraternity; something which would have been expected in that era.

In which case, this may be of interest to you:-


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Cn1L_cgHPY

Another titbit - http://oxfordindex.oup.com/view/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195327113.003.0072

Extraordinary!

How so?

It's me. I just can't imagine them hitting it off. I think of them of opposites.

This has been the most sustained conversation I have had on this site.

I don't need the poem. I've always preferred prose, and have found the perpetual comparison of music and poetry to be rather backward.


@ahinton: your lengthy exhortations, particularly in the first entry, suggest an irony.


I have no issue with whatever introductions or explanations the composer may have - but they should know their audience. Hah.


As a kid, I liked opera. But shortly into studying music (in my early 20s), I realized the inherent programme of the voice, and I shunned all vocal/vocally-involved music. Even solo instrument pieces were discriminated. I have since somewhat rescinded that. I love popcul songs - and oftenly don't much care for voice in Art Music. Especially sopranos - no bueno. Particularly in severely chromatic environments, the voice doesn't sound like an instrument, even when intended to. It just don't work tha same way.


Funny such fuss about Schoenberg.....I'm listening to the first of the four quartets, all four in cue on the vid......

Really? Assuming there to be such exhortations in the first place (and it might be instructive for you to identify at least some examples), to what irony do you refer and how do you arrive at the assumption of its existence?

IMHO some works seem horror movies's soundtracks

What annoys me? Grunts and shouts in middle of (possibly) otherwise listenable pieces, clarinets mutilated into pieces and squawked through, "extended" vocal gibberish of mutilated words and notes (Monk, Berberian), noise, electronic goo-gee-gaw I could probably replicate with my grandson's toys, toy piano concertos, concertos for florist and orchestra and similar BS. What doesn't annoy me? Subtle harmonies, rhythms, instrumental combinations, intriguing and mind-boggling counterpoint, sounds that reach emotional places in me I didn't know I had. Something I can listen to once for its big "middle" sound, then re-listen many times for the "edges" of the sounds.

That's what you know, versus knowing what you see. As in, the other came before one, and it's time to pay the piper in understanding authority. Else, your listening is.....irrelevant.



Dude, really? Go back and read your first post in the thread.

That post reads

"ALL modern music? With no exceptions whatsoever? Everything from Pärt to Ferneyhough, Adams to Boulez, Jenkins to Barrett (now there's a question for those from Abertawe!), Reich to Hespos, Matthews to - er - Matthews? Hmm. One might answer your question with "anyone who appears to lack discrimination in it"?..."

It is clear that I asked a question (and not of you) rather than provided an exhortation, lengthy or otherwise (and 48 words is hardly lengthy).

So your point (if any) is?...

@ahinton: I meant the second one. That was long, and arguably a little verbose, which fitted in with the discussion you were having about [over-]explaining a work. Which didn't bother me, I just didn't read the whole thing through, instead skimming it.

((First post on page five - Law of Fives!))

Surely it meant nothing to me—but as it apparently meant a lot to a lot of other people I daresay it is all my own fault
(http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51RFRNX%2BsEL._SS500_.jpg)
Best

These is always an issue of semantics when discussing such vague topics, but there is generally one type of modern music that I cannot endure.
This is what I would describe as "bang on a can" esoteric music which makes a fetish of sounds and timbres. Clever titles and manipulated audio cannot disguise a lack of talent and I refuse to waste my time trying to detect a meaningful message. I feel as though these composers are actually making fun of their listeners.

The second is hardly longer than the first. I think that you must have meant the third (which suggests that your skim-reading extends to entire threads rather than merely to individual posts) - but where are the specific exhortations therein?

I think there should be an embargo on composers employing breathing sounds. It. Has. Been. Done.

My wife is against anything where the composer writes of it, "The music describes an arch".

@Toby Esterhase: there's a lot of cool stuff in popcul from the thirties through the seventies, many of them Art Music composers - like Leonard Rosenman, who did things like Twilight Zone. So some of it was alongside the real stuff.


Yes. And wrong word. Hmmmmmm.......exclamations isn't right.......well, enough of that.


They are just not using the right breathing. Of course, most are not, so whether it be physical training, or bedroom theatrics, they are just not doing it correctly. And there is music to be had.

And what's wrong with arches?

It's a cliche, that's what's wrong with it.

Talking of arches, a friend of mine is an academic in a university music department. One day a student brought him a composition exercise. The piece was called "Parabolas", and sure enough, if you looked at the score, all the notes traced out parabolas everywhere across the paper.

Friend: Yes, but what is this actually going to sound like?

Student: Ummm ...

I feel a lot of the remarks above need to be read in some kind of context.

It's true that a great deal of "new music" written and performed in Britain presents challenges to audiences that are - in my view - unreasonable, ill-considered, and frankly ill-mannered. Regrettably a number of young composers in W Europe believe that the only route to fame lies through infamy.  They become (in some ways, understandably) so angry with being ignored by audiences, that they write music that is more and more confrontational, in an attempt to rile the audience into some kind of reaction.  They have, frankly, lost touch with audiences. (Most of these composers never go to concerts).

The situation is not the same everywhere. Not only where I live, but throughout Central and Eastern Europe, audiences look forward to new works from composers. Look at the following new music has in Estonia, for example?  But then listen to that repertoire - and you will not find the infantile gestures and practiced hostility to be heard in much music being written in the UK currently.  Nor should we throw the baby out with the bathwater - there is a lot of worthwhile, well-crafted music being written in the UK... but it often disappears amid a torrent of intentionally unpleasant look-at-me pish.

Being a composer from UK (well, Scotland, anyway!) myself, it behoves me to exercise due discretion and refrain within reason from making judgements on this, but there is no doubting the value of the points that you make.

One has only to consider, for example, the work of the Boston Symphony Orchestra between the two world wars to appreciate that audiences for new music were largely enthusiastic and revealed a genuine appetite for it. I confess to being less than aware that the situation is palpably different in Central and Eastern Europe to that which pertains in Western Europe, but I suppose that this is largely because I've not really given focused thought to that subject. I'm reminded of the expression "never apologise, never explain" (sometimes attributed to the scholar and translator Benjamin Jowett but rather more frequently to a more famous Benjamin, Disraeli, though I'm not sure who thought of it first!) in the context of having adapted it (in the guise of a kind of unconscious homily) to "never ingratiate, never alienate", to which I've tried to adhere as far as possible in my own work.

A number of very different composers - for example Sorabji, Carter, Birtwistle - have expressed at various times and in various ways sentiments about not considering their audiences when writing (although this might be a useful point at which to remind anyone who might need reminding that Babbitt did not say/write "who cares if you listen?"!), but this has often been mistaken for a composerly arrogance manifesting itself in the kind of "confrontational" attitude and "practiced hostility" to which you refer; it in no wise undermines your point to seek to correct that misunderstanding by pointing out that what truly lies behind such a stance are the practical considerations that composers

(a) need primarily to consider their performers, those vital intermediaries between them and their audiences and

(b) can never know in any case of whom their audiences might consist at any time or how individual members thereof might respond to their work,

which arguably explains why composers cannot expect in practice to be able to think meaningfully and usefully about pleasing their audiences, but that's a quite different phenomenon to that of wilfully attempted alienation of such audiences for the intended purpose of attention-seeking of the kind about which you write.

Carter pointed out that those who deliberately motivate themselves to try to write primarily with a view to pleasing their audiences are on a hiding to nothing much of ultimate value; much the same could be said - and for the same reasons - of the opposite modus operandi that you deprecate here. What matters above all is to be honest with oneself and one's work, respond only to whatever is necessary to produce that work (rather than to external pressures extraneous to the creative process) and then leave it to the performers to put it across as best they can (the only exception to the last of those three being when the composer performs his/her own work, although that is obviously a far rarer occurrence than was once the case).

The "look-at-me" thing is especially deplorable to the extent that, in principle, it appears to seek to draw attention away from what should matter first and foremost - the music - and towards its composer and what passes for his/her avowed (and sometimes verbosely expressed) rationale for composing this, that or the other piece in the way that he/she has done so; one British composer in particular (who shall of course remain nameless) is especially well known for indulging in the habit of expounding at length about the processes that lay behind the music, but then if people will invite that composer to hold forth on such things, the resultant abstrusely obfuscational self-absorbed verbalising is no more to be wondered at than it is to be understood.

That said, the prospect of composers never attending concerts (to which I confess I have likewise given little thought until you mentioned it) is one that must surely raise the hackles of suspicion, rather as does a certain composer's expressed lack of interest in listening to performances of works once they've been written and premièred (and I'll leave you and anyone else to decide whether or not that composer might be identical to the similarly nameless one referred to above!); such apparent disinterest seems to me to emerge from a similar arrogance, to the extent thzt if one appears not especially to enjoy listening to one's own music, why and how should one expect others to do the same?!...

In the above paragraph I wrote "verbosely expressed", so I should end with due apology (albeit without explanation!) for having fallen foul of verbosity of expression myself!

No apology is needed - indeed thanks are due for the thoughtful and detailed posting. 

That's most kind; you're welcome, of course. These are certainly issues well worthy of attentive consideration but which are often cast to one side as though they may instead be either ignored or simply taken for granted.

If someone hasn't at least properly sounded it out on the keyboard or via sequencer - I would've asked, and my instructor knew by looking at it, and would ask merely wondering if the b[a]uffoon knew what on earth they'd written on the paper (sometimes it was I, I knew it and didn't argue wth the fellow) - then it isn't valid. But that's about the music, rather than what it signifies, the latter being what you at least to me intoned in your first on that.


People should write what they feel they need to write - and [the rest is incomprehensible] And academically-speaking, merely posit the....reality....that they're being infantile in their efforts. Even if you understand them, you probably don't understand these youths - why they're so confounded - it's because their culture in general, IS infantile. I have been saying it for years. It turns out I'm right.

There is little new under the sun these days   :)

(http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-9FSPuojROe8/TY5W9EAvFdI/AAAAAAAAACM/hKAMGjw7FrQ/s760/subtilior.gif)

[Baude Cordier - approx 1380-1440 - 'Belle, Bonne, Sage', the so-called Ars Subtilior school ]
[It sounds like this http://iplayer.fm/song/95061966/Ensemble_PAN_-_Belle_Bonne_Sage_-_Baude_Cordier_Instrumental_Lute_2_Vielles/ (http://iplayer.fm/song/95061966/Ensemble_PAN_-_Belle_Bonne_Sage_-_Baude_Cordier_Instrumental_Lute_2_Vielles/) ]

Or indeed, more recently too.

(http://worthalook.hyms.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/madking__0.jpg)
[PMD, Eight Songs For A Mad King]

Many thanks for Belle, Bonne, Sage!

I hoped you would appreciate that one, Mr Harp :))  It's the "prettiest" of Cordier's pieces, and perhaps the most lyrically melodic - although not the most 'ingenious'.  Tout par compas ('All by the compass') is a circular canon which has a separate canon (in a different metre!) as its accompaniment. Worth a Google, if you have time on your hands :)

I somewhat regret the absence on this forum of our erstwhile chum 'Baziron' - who was far more 'up' than I am on these ars subtilior works.

I think you are onto something.  Tonality lives - those who deny it are probably lazy

Leaving aside the fact that "tonality" is not so much a finite phenomenon as a matter of degree, I don't imagine that anyone would deny that it lives, whatever kind of music they might write and/or listen to; likewise, I've yet to encounter a composer who would claim either "that nothing more can be done with tonality because so many composers have used it in the past, so that it is now exhausted" or "to 'reinvent musical language' with every new piece"

On more reflection, I come to think about non tonal music as use of an expanded pallets.  Though most of my compositions are tonal I make an occasional foray to the 'dark side'

Chaos:  The Sedimentary Lines of the Grand Canyon (https://m.soundcloud.com/edward-a-schaffer/chaos-the-sedimentary-lines-of)

The expansion of "tonality" into areas that some might describe as "non-tonality" or "atonality" has only served to widen the expressive capabilities of music. I don't know why "atonlaity" - whatever that might mean to whomsoever - should be regarded as some kind of "dark side" as though this could and should be thought of as its only possible manifestation.

When I said, "Dark Side", I was being very tongue and cheek.    I have participated on other sites where anything but  conservative tonality was described by a couple of users as, "Disgusting".  When I suggested to them that They needed to get over the fact that Robert Schumann was dead, they weren't happy.  LOL

I imagine that I might just be able to guess one particular site to which you allude, but no names and all that...

 ;D  There may be more than one now that I think of it

Sorry, I have heard both those opinions expressed. I can't give you names. In one case, a composer said (on air) that using tonality was like taking a bath in someone else's bathwater.

I also remember attending the premier of a work by James Macmillan and sitting alongside two other composers. One of them exclaimed in a tone of horror, "He's abandoned modernism!"

I'm as sorry as you are that you've had the misfortune to experience something that I never have done. In the first instance, I'd have retorted by saying something about throwing the baby out with it, whoever's it was and, in the second, I'd quote Dorothy Parker (albeit out of context) by asking "how can they tell?"...

Since both composers were speaking on air, repartee would have been fruitless. In the second case, the composer was doing a pre-concert talk about the BBC commission she'd been given. She started by saying something about how her first concern was about how she was going to invent a new musical language for this piece. The result, I have to say, was as dull as a wet Wednesday in Wishaw.

On subject of thread, and I may be repeating myself, I hate "extended" playing techniques, don't understand what is beautiful about the squawking of the mouthpiece of a saxophone or clarinet, might as well just play a kazoo. Then the habit of some of these "innovators" of having one of the players send out a primal scream right in the middle of something that may actually have its own beauties--until the murder takes place. And don't get me started on the people who manipulate their voices in beastly ways and call it music, Berberian and Monk to name a couple. Oh, well, one size definitely doesn't fit all, but for this listener, beauty of sound which includes some well-composed dissonances and emotional transport are the goals, and I can always go back to Schubert, can't I?

I've never experienced one of those either (so perhaps I should get out more), but it can often be problematic when a composer is invited to spout forth about his/her work; "what I was trying to do in this piece was...", and all that; I fear that it probably fails to enlighten more often that it enlightens. Michael Tippett and even Elliott Carter on occasion strike me as having been guilty of this kind of thing. I must have been conscious of this for a long time because when interviewed about my third piano sonata by BBC more years ago than I care to remember, I said "it's in one movement and plays for around 15 minutes" (and, since it plays for more like 17, I didn't even get that right) which might have sounded rude (albeit quite unintentionally) but I really didn't have anything else to say about it, preferring instead to leave all the "saying" to the pianist whose performance of it was about to be broadcast.

It's the same with poetry. I am fond of a remark by Ezra Pound: "Messages are for Western Union". The answer to the question, "What is it about?" should be along the lines of, "It just is".

One composer I knew so hated supplying programme notes that he occasionally asked me to write absurdist parodies of the genre, which probably baffled the audiences.

There is no symbiosis/chemistry between music and picture, in my opinion. Don’t know. Maybe those (http://bingozap.com) modern composers are just lazy.

???

The single most annoying thing about modern composers is their giving silly names to their works of music, instead of simply identifying the form. Hundreds of examples of this can be found on the B.B.C.'s modern music programme. Some one once said something about the "land without music" did not he, and this business of the silly names is part of what he meant.

"Identifying the form" is something that can only be done if there is a term for it and, even then, it doesn't tell the listener much in advance; "Piano Sonata", for example, can cover the work of Scarlatti (no slouch when it came to writing them), Beethoven, Liszt and Szymanowski and can also embrace a work such as Sorabji's Opus Archimagicum, the "silly" title that you might consider him to have given to his fifth and last one.

Would you prefer Liszt to have entitled his symphonic poems "Symphonic Poem No. ×" or Elgar to have called a work "Oratorio No. 1" rather than The Dream of Gerontius? Who in any case is to decide - and on what grounds - whether or not a title is "silly"? Should I re-entitle my Sequentia Claviensis "Piano Piece in Six Movements"? (that's a rhetorical question, incidentally, since I intend to do no such thing). And how would "String Quintet" be expected to denote that the piece includes a double bass (still less than a solo soprano in its finale) in cases when it does so?

Whoever it was that coined the phrase "land without music" did so long before some of what you might think to be the "sillier" of titles were penned in any case.

Indeed it cannot. Scarlatti wrote no works for the piano whatsoever.

The majority of his output was written for the harpsichord - a plucked-string instrument which in Scarlatti's time would usually have had two manuals, and most often a number of different 'stops', such as a buff, or options to use either four-foot pitch, or (lawks-a-mercy) a sixteen-foot sound alongside the conventional eight-foot. No dynamic effects are possible "by touch" on the harpsichord - yet no-one berates this same feature on the organ, which is set up in similar fashion.  Scarlatti specified the organ in four of his keyboard sonatas.

Some have suggested that Scarlatti might have himself played the new-fangled fortepiano on occasion. However, his works do not make use of dynamic markings that suggest so. Where he does suggest possible 'echo' effects, these could probably be feasibly (or even perhaps better) played on a different manual of the harpsichord. It would probably not be wrong to play his later keyboard sonatas on a fortepiano, although even the composer could not have hoped that one would always be available.

The modern joanna is an 88-key instrument which features one manual only - along with pedals for partly silencing its din when thought appropriate, or prolonging its clatter when the performer hasn't learnt the music very well.  Instead of plucking the strings, it bashes them from below with hammers, and thus is a percussion instrument, and no relative of the harpsichord's at all.

Similarly, JS Bach wrote no "piano sonatas", and certainly no "piano concertos"  ::)  Suggesting that he did perfectly illustrates the paucity of thinking behind retrospectively slapping genre labels onto works, in defiance of all respect for their composers' intentions. It also suggests a bogus equivalence between compositional approaches of, say, Scarlatti and Tchaikovsky from which neither of these two gentlemen stands to gain.

Whilst of course I take your point in principle re Scarlatti (and indeed expected someone to make it), the term "piano sonata" still covers a multitude of sins and the opposite of sins and cannot reasonably be used as some kind of artificial portmanteau term in the way that member Gerard appears to suggest that it can - and of course I didn't mention J. S. Bach in this context. The point that I sought to make was in specific response to Gerard's rather odd assertion about absurd work titles and I admit to being unsure exactly what it is to which he objects and what he'd like to see/have seen in its place where such titles are concerned.

But let's try again - perhaps more effectively this time. We'll take "symphony" and, for the sake of argument, specifically those that were not given subtitles by their composers or by others; what does that word, as a work title, tell the listener in advance about its "form" (as Gerard puts it), when it could refer to a work in any number of movements from one upwards and be as short and for relatively small forces as Milhaud's 4th or as vast as Mahler 3, Brian's Gothic or the larger symphonies for piano solo and organ solo by Sorabji?

I note that Gerard has yet to respond to any of this...

Ooo-errr, this Sinfonia doesn't even specify the instruments which are to play it?

(http://media.npr.org/assets/img/2012/01/31/Monteverdi-Poppea_wide-2bd2755f74adae942338cbe44aaeb72c1d90fe78.jpg?s=1400)

Yet Sinfonia it is, in the composer's own hand.

Were we on a quite different forum, Pedant's Paradise would note that if you'd asked for a symphonia during the 12th and 13th centuries, this is what you would have received:

(http://lh3.ggpht.com/_De2rVj3mBZ0/TQ0LTB1hKbI/AAAAAAAACcA/fXv5KG_roSU/s576/cantiga_4.jpg)

It was the instrument's latin name.

Quite! You make the point that I sought to make. We'll simply have to await further explanatory data from Gerard should he be prepared to follow up his assertion about "silly" titles with such.

Yet having brought Praetorius into this (for it was he who gave such detail about hurdy-gurdies being called 'symphonies'), it seems only fair to mention some of his egregious silly-naming of pieces. "Hahnentanz" (Chicken Dance) is one of his hits from 'Terpsichore' (1612) which did the rounds of the Early Music movement in the 1980s...   scored-up for almost every possible crumhornish line-up. Yet the most peculiar title (presumably as a part of a balletic intermezzo, with some kind of guild obligations being fulfilled for a regional monarch?) among his dances is the "Danse of the apprentice alchemists who must perform before the King". It's not only modern composers who name their pieces in potty ways ;)

(https://d1w7fb2mkkr3kw.cloudfront.net/assets/images/book/large/9781/6087/9781608740215.jpg)

Quite - but we still await the wit and wisdom of Gerard in alerting us to what he thinks of as "silly" titles and what he doesn't...

Well, I will speak up for Gerard, since I have some sympathy with his views here. It's hardly fair to point out that Elgar did not use "Oratorio No. 1" as a title. No-one I ever heard of numbered oratorios like that, largely because oratorios are not abstract pieces, so a title describing what they are about is appropriate. On the other hand, a composer writing an entirely abstract violin sonata, used to title it "Violin Sonata No. 2" or whatever. Now it would be called "Seven States of Rain" or somesuch.

"Danse of the apprentice alchemists who must perform before the King" is amusing, but not silly. The piece is a dance, and described as such. I have no problem whatever with "Sequentia Claviensis" as a descriptive title. But "Seven States of Rain" (and there are many worse) tells the listener nothing except that the composer is rather pretentious.

I once had to compose a piece for a class, and when it came to a title, I opened my copy of Herodotus at random and picked the first name I saw. The composer taking the class asked about the title, and I told him. He said, "Well, I know a lot of modern titles are pretty arbitrary, but I never heard one done quite so cynically!" (No, I don't remember what it was.)

I'm largely with you up to that point...  but then the iceberg starts to melt for me.

What is that makes "Seven States Of Rain" pretentious (if, let us say, the composer seriously intended to portray different kinds of precipitation as music), but "Four Sea Interludes" is perfectly fine? Or indeed, Awakening of cheerful feelings upon arrival in the countryside ?

I can't help feeling that the criteria here are not being used in a fair and comparable way. Works we know (and, perhaps, love) are allowed to have 'programmatic' titles - but works (or composers) we sneer at are denied the same right. The example of Herodotus is very telling, since appeals to classical antiquity (no matter how tenuous in reality) have long been a handy get-out. Stravinsky, for example, could be accused of getting away with blue murder in this area ;)  Yet had the composer of "Seven States Of Rain" only named their piece La Tempestata di Mare, they would already be on the A-Level Set Works list.

This, however, may reflect our ingrained tendency to adore the old, and deride the new - regardless of actual merits, and it might well be a societal prejudice. There's even a website which officially (!) derides music written after 1918, for example.

All very valid points, for which many thanks. Until Gerard comes clean about his specific concerns on this, we'll simply have to wait for him to do so and consider what he has to say but, in the meantime, I cannot help but suspect that his allegiances ally with one Johannes Brahms, although even he wrote Ein Deutsches Requiem, Schicksalslied and other works not called "piano trio no. ×" or "sonata no. ×"; maybe Gerard is prepared to make exceptions for vocal works but, until he tells us, we can't reasonably be expecgted to know...

I'm not sure Gerald has a casting vote on the matter :-)  Nor does it matter if we reach concensus or not - since it's most likely composers will continue to reserve the right to name their works however they please :-)

As we have seen from the (many) examples quoted during this discussion, there is an established history of composers both adopting generic form-titles (with numeration), as well as adopting descriptive titles of their own choosing and format.  Sometimes both have been combined... a numbered piano sonata or symphony which also, in parallel, has some name of the composer's choosing, for example.           

The imagination of the listening public can often be more effectively captured by a descriptive title...  'Eroica' is a more winning name than 'Symphony No 3'.  In the case of today's exceptionally prolific symphonists, some kind of name serves as a reminder as to exactly which one 'Number 87' actually was. Probably the same is true of other genres - despite liking what I hear, I really can't remember the numbers of all John White's piano sonatas.
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There are many worse examples, but I was short of time and looking fro something specifically for violin and piano. The work is not seven states of rain. Four Sea Interludes ARE interludes. If it had been entitled "Rain: Seven sketches for violin and piano" there would be no criticism of it at all. And when did you ever hear anyone talk about a "state of rain", anyway?

Let's go back to Alastair's point that modern works often don't follow classical forms, and you can't call a piece a violin sonata if it's not a sonata. Whet irks me is that when a piece evidently DOES fit a classical title, it's not used. Let's take a recent example: Julian Anderson's recent Proms commission. This is a piano concerto, and was introduced as a piano concerto, but is it called "Piano Concerto No 1"? No, it's called "The Imaginary Museum". Not even "Piano Concerto 'The Imaginary Museum'". Note that definitive article, as though there is one imaginary museum somewhere in the world and we ought to know about it. If it had been called "An Imaginary Museum", even, that would have struck a less pretentious note.

In contrast, take James Dillon. A work like Helle Nacht doesn't call out for any formal title, and the title it has is fine. But when Dillon writes a string quartet, he calls it "String Quartet No 8" (or whatever), and not "Remembered Crystal Geometries".