jeffw@tekecs.UUCP (Jeff Winslow) (06/02/84)
First, I'd like to make a few comments in the nature of rebuttals. Skip a page for the "essay". Someone here claimed Wozzeck was "crap". He made this judgement after listening to it *once*. In the ten years since, he's never tried it again! That amazes me. But it doesn't impress me in the least. The plot of Wozzeck is no sillier than that of The Barber of Seville, and it is a good deal more relevant to what the world is really like today. And I cannot imagine how someone could listen to marie's lullaby in the first act without realizing the how beautiful Berg's music can be. open your ears, open your mind! (Another Berg example - how about Dr. Schon's theme from lulu? You call tha modern? Hell, mahler could have written that if he'd lived three years longer - look at the Adagio from the tenth symphony.) Someone else claimed he'd given modern music a "fair hearing", and he still didn't like it. maybe - I guess we'll have to take his word for his hearing's fairness. I heard 12-tone music off and on for more than five years, always *trying* to really *hear* it, before I began to really appreciate it, so I'm always a little suspicious of this "fair hearing" jazz. now... I'm convinced by my own experience that composers turned away from the tonal system as it was known in the 17th-19th centuries because, simply, they were bored. I challenge anyone to listen, and play, everything from Corelli to mahler and back day in, day out (as someone serious about music around the turn of the century might easily do) without getting jaded. They wanted a fresh means of expression, and they found several. Just before the turn of the century, music from the non-Western world began to be heard widely in Europe. What an effect this must have had on the imaginations of people seeking new means of musical expression! Also, some composers were perceptive enough to see that, as the 19th century progressed, the tonal heirarchies in a given work tended to get more and more subtle, so that in the end, the various keys touched on in a work had almost equal significance. Atonality was the logical conclusion of this; 12-tone theory was a way of imposing order theoretically on what Schoenberg and others were already doing in practice. Unfortunately, at the same time the audience for this kind of music was broadening to include large masses of people who did not feel at all jaded with the old ways. (Their descendants are alive and well and contributing to net.music.classical.) They let their disapproval be known in various ways, the most famous of which was the riot which prematurely ended the opening night of Stravinsky's "Rite of Spring" - a fairly tame work by today's standards. That didn't faze the composers, though. Ever since Beethoven's time it was customary for a composer who did not find a favorable audience to appeal to the future. perhaps the growing rate of change in society led creators to try to make something of permanence in response. In so doing, they would naturally not be quite as concerned as before that their work find immediate appreciation. This trend also continues to the present day, perhaps somewhat diminished by the thought that the future may belong only to radiation-resistant species. Composers will continue as they wish; so will audiences. The point is this: It is silly to think, just because any given individual doesn't like it, that modern music isn't good, can't be great, and can't give birth to other musical greatness. All it means is that that individual doesn't like it. listen to what you like, let us who like this modern music do the same, and stop telling us it's no good - we instinctively know otherwise. I'm not trying to be pompous; if you see that something is beautiful, and I say it isn't, should you care? of course not. Another thing to remember - in any age the vast bulk of artistic production is mediocre. (We can thank musicologists for showing us that!) We see past ages through a filter that tends to block the non-great. That may be enough to account for the seeming lack of quality in modern music compared to older styles. (It won't help people who can't get through Wozzeck or lulu, though - keep trying, you guys.) Cheers, Jeff Winslow