[HN Gopher] Schoenberg: Why He Matters
___________________________________________________________________
Schoenberg: Why He Matters
Author : tintinnabula
Score : 48 points
Date : 2023-11-29 14:47 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.theatlantic.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.theatlantic.com)
| jjgreen wrote:
| Long and quite dense review of Harvey Sachs' _Schoenberg: Why He
| Matters_ , looks interesting if you like that sort of thing; I
| do, so added to my Christmas "hint dropping" list.
| dang wrote:
| (Thanks - I've changed the title to that above. For book review
| articles, we've found it's usually best to use the title of the
| book.)
| emptybits wrote:
| https://web.archive.org/web/20231128002043/https://www.theat...
| jancsika wrote:
| Challenging music is a tough sell because there has been about a
| hundred years of a critical mass of composers who took the metric
| of "challenging" and made it a target.
|
| That created a lot of noise that's not of the compelling type.
| And while it's not so pretentious that, say, the music
| accidentally sounds outside of the human frequency range, it's
| pretentious enough to make non-musickers question whether there's
| really any _there_ there.
|
| Music cognition is still a young enough science to leave
| questions lingering about what is and isn't happening on a
| musical-perception level.
|
| Also-- not sure I've ever seen this talked about, but music
| perception shares sensory apparatus with one's general sense of
| hearing. So challenging music with unfamiliar timbres and
| frequency combinations can be physically grating and overload the
| listener on that sensory level. It's difficult to be open to new,
| unfamiliar musical forms, and probably impossibly so if one is
| grumpy because the delivery format makes one feel as if the music
| is actively hurting one's ears.
| TheOtherHobbes wrote:
| The case against serialism is easy. Tone rows are a pointless
| conceit. They turn composition into a crossword puzzle.
|
| It's a worthless constraint. There is nothing you can do with
| tone rows - retrogrades, inversions, permutations, all of it -
| that you can't do in free atonality.
|
| There's an argument that serialism forces composers to use those
| operations instead of falling back towards conventional theory.
| But in fact the opposite happened. It didn't take long for serial
| composers to start mining serialism for tonal elements.
|
| As for popularity - you can find abstract expressionist paintings
| for sale on Etsy. You won't find much hard serial music on
| Bandcamp. And it's pretty easy to generate it with software now.
|
| But most of all Schoenberg was _trying too hard to be
| remembered._ Bach, Mozart, Debussy and his predecessors saw
| themselves as jobbing composers. They knew they had to keep at
| least one ear moored in audience expectations.
|
| Schoenberg desperately wanted to be remembered as a great
| innovator. He didn't care if audiences loved or hated the music,
| as long as his name was out there was an Important Composer.
| gnulinux wrote:
| > There's an argument that serialism forces composers to use
| those operations instead of falling back towards conventional
| theory. But in fact the opposite happened. It didn't take long
| for serial composers to start mining serialism for tonal
| elements.
|
| Nothing of this sort happened except in very exceptional cases
| where it's very obvious and clearly intentional, such as Alban
| Berg (who chose adversarially tonal tone rows). Besides you
| assume the only benefit you get from serialism is atonality but
| that makes no sense because many composers used tonal rows too
| (i.e. tone rows with 7 or 9 pitch classes in the Major or Minor
| system). Not only that but different composers used serialism
| for different purposes.
|
| You are however right that Schoenberg assumed 12 tone serialism
| implies some form of atonality, which is incorrect. Research
| shows that he had a bias towards atonal tone rows.
|
| Lerdahl's criticism of serialism is also convincing, i.e. the
| abstract structure of music does not translate to the heard
| structure of music. It's fair to classify this as the "art"
| part of writing serialistic pieces that theory is insufficient.
|
| Besides all of this, traditional music theory teaching focuses
| too much on serialism as a "technique" and not enough as a
| "structure", which was the main point of Schoenberg. For
| example, Elliot Carter claims he doesn't intentionally use row
| vectors or row matrices in his compositions, but his works can
| certainly be analyzed and understood this way. It seems like
| for a minor subset of free atonal compositions serialism is the
| natural structure of this kind of music. This point is often
| missed.
|
| I firmly disagree with your points about Schoenberg. I think
| he's one of the two gigantic innovators of music in 20th
| century: Philip Glass and him. (I understand this is extremely
| controversial, opinions are mine). It really takes a lot to
| make artistic statements so profound your works look misplaced
| in your canon but are still firmly part of it.
| mrob wrote:
| >gigantic innovators of music in 20th century
|
| I still hold out hope that someday Harry Partch will get the
| recognition he deserves. If traditional Western harmony is
| played out, surely the obvious solution is adding more notes?
| It makes more sense to me than trying to wring out the last
| few drops of novelty using Schoenberg's ideas. Partch
| demonstrated that microtonal works can sound both pleasant
| and novel, but musicians are strangely resistant to the idea.
|
| One exception is Sevish, who produces some of the most
| interesting electronic dance and ambient music I've heard.
| Example:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J-JZhCWsk3M
|
| I wish more musicians would compose stuff like this.
| zozbot234 wrote:
| One can also explore _inharmonic_ timbres - the kinds of
| timbres that are naturally produced by cymbals, gongs,
| bells, drumheads etc. William Sethares has convincingly
| shown that one can compute inharmonic timbres that will
| make "weird" tunings/scales that are _not_ based on the
| harmonic series sound "in tune", and usable as music.
| (This has to be done by minimizing a prediction of
| psychoacoustic "roughness" for the given tuning/scale; to
| some extent, it's a trial and error process.)
| Slow_Hand wrote:
| Oooh! Interesting. Do you know of a good resource for
| learning about Sethares' method?
| zozbot234 wrote:
| He has a book about it - _Tuning, Timbre, Spectrum,
| Scale_. Unfortunately, I don 't know of anyone who has
| tried to reproduce his results and make them more easily
| approachable for broader use, at least not thus far.
| mrob wrote:
| His website is a good place to start:
|
| https://sethares.engr.wisc.edu/consemi.html
| Slow_Hand wrote:
| Ableton Live is about to release a new update with a
| comprehensive, well-integrated means of working in non-
| standard scales and custom micro-tuning. Hopefully this
| will lower the technical barrier to entry among
| contemporary musicians enough to broaden it's usage.
| handy2000 wrote:
| Ableton Live already has Microtuner
| (https://www.ableton.com/en/packs/microtuner/), I haven't
| heard it being used much though. Also, Bitwig released
| the Micro-Pitch device years ago.
|
| I am curious whether a better Live integration is going
| to lead to more usage.
| handy2000 wrote:
| I somewhat disagree with your assessment. I don't think the
| next phase after traditional Western harmony is a wider
| adoption of microtonal music.
|
| What we see more and more of is an increased reliance on
| aspects that were previously less explored in the
| traditional (orchestral) Western music, such as texture and
| rhythm. Even in academic music, but mostly in cross-genre
| acoustic/electronic production.
| zozbot234 wrote:
| > Lerdahl's criticism of serialism is also convincing, i.e.
| the abstract structure of music does not translate to the
| heard structure of music.
|
| There are ways to address this however. One can add small-
| scale atonal elements to an otherwise tonal work, in a way
| that can be understood by the ear. I think this may account
| for why Webern is perhaps the most popular among the atonal
| and serial composers: his works are small-scale enough that
| one can at least _think_ about what grokking them musically
| may be like. Same for the 'freely atonal' works of early
| Schoenberg. So it was nowhere near the total failure some
| people might think it was, just not the be-all and end-all.
| handy2000 wrote:
| Interesting point re: technique vs structure. Structure is in
| general a much harder aspect to both master and innovate in.
|
| I am curious, why do you consider Glass a more innovative
| composer than, say, Reich? Reich's counterpoint and phase
| music seem to have pushed music forward more noticeably than
| Glass (outside of, perhaps, Einstein on the Beach).
| gnulinux wrote:
| I don't find Reich as convincing because I don't think he
| was prolific enough and canonical (with respect to forms he
| used) enough to make the profound statement Glass was able
| to pull off with his Violin Concertos, String Quartets and
| Operas [1]. Really, I see art as a tradition and Glass
| managed to put WCM (mostly concertos, symphonies, quartets,
| operas, solo piano really...) in the most novel context
| since Schoenberg. Reich is a great composer, but it's a
| tremendously harder pursuit to innovate within the
| tradition rather than reject it all and restart.
|
| Also you talk about counterpoint and incidentally early
| Glass sounds very contrapuntal (like early Reich) but I
| think a core message in Glass' body of works is that this
| entire bike shedding on harmony is so silly. There is so
| much to music beyond just pitch, and you can literally pick
| 4 chords and go crazy with it. He treats harmony as a
| solved problem. I think Reich would agree with this but I
| don't think his message is as profound. Think about Adams'
| "Harmonielehre" where he claims he wanted to combine
| minimalism and early 20th century harmony. The problem here
| I see here is that common practice harmony revolves around
| richness and variety. Fux himself says as much. It sounds
| gorgeous and new, but it doesn't go a long way to innovate
| anything. Although Glass' music sounds unserious, he
| actually tried to force himself to innovate. Which is what
| Schoenberg tried to do. Restrictions motivate artists to be
| creative.
|
| Listen to Glass first string quartet, it was composed in
| 1966 before Reich's phase music.
|
| [1] And of course his piano etudes but pianists insist they
| serve no pedagogical purpose, even though I still can't
| find someone who can actually play them well except Maki
| Namekawa. Roll eyes.
| squidsoup wrote:
| Interesting distinction you make between experimental composers
| and those with _some_ desire to appeal to a broader audience,
| or at least some conventional sensibility. I think the same
| applies to contemporary music - while I personally find great
| pleasure in the moment listening to free jazz, noise, and
| ambient music, it is ephemeral and soon forgotten. The music
| that I find memorable, that truly haunts me, has elements of
| the experimental, but is still fundamentally melodic. My Bloody
| Valentine might be a good example.
| bjornlouser wrote:
| "But most of all Schoenberg was trying too hard to be
| remembered. Bach, Mozart, Debussy and his predecessors saw
| themselves as jobbing composers. They knew they had to keep at
| least one ear moored in audience expectations."
|
| But weren't audience expectations tainted by the musical
| establishment? Debussy (born 1862) won the Prix de Rome, but
| somehow Ravel (born 1875, one year after Schoenberg) was
| snubbed for five consecutive years.
|
| Something terrible seems to have happened in music schools
| around the turn of the century. It's hard to blame Schoenberg
| for wanting to watch it all burn.
| msluyter wrote:
| I majored in flute performance in college, and have listened /
| played a lot of avante garde music. My roommate, a bass player,
| and I were really into it at the time. We once played
| Shoenberg's Pierrot Lunaire on a tape loop over and over for an
| entire week -- and emerged with our sanity mostly intact. (An
| interesting side fact is that now I can barely recall it.) I
| played Luciano Berio's Sequenza on my Sr. recital. In
| retrospect, I think I was mostly relishing playing the role of
| enfant terrible, playing weird music just to get a rise out of
| people.
|
| These days I don't willingly listen to atonal music of the
| Shoenberg/Carter/Boulez variety. I have a variety of theories
| about why modern classical music tends to be rejected, but in
| the end, all I can really say is that I have a subjective
| response to, say, Stravinsky's Rite of Spring, that's entirely
| different from his Movements for Piano & Orchestra.
| Tainnor wrote:
| Pierrot Lunaire is pre-dodecaphonic Schonberg, though. I
| actually find it quite charming, in a way.
| atoav wrote:
| I think the question why contemporary music intimidates or
| infuriates people could be expanded to art as well.
|
| As someone who studied art and film I found that even extremely
| powerful experimental works of music, art or film will have
| critics like these. Don't get me wrong: One doesn't has to _like_
| every piece of art. But even without _liking_ it one could still
| respect the expression, the craft, the energy and /or the thought
| contained within a work. There is a lot of great art that I don't
| like.
|
| The problem many people have with these modern things is that
| they think of art as something one can "parse" into a specific
| intended meaning. So once you encounter unparseable art, chances
| are you will feel stupid. Or worse, you feel the artwork "calls"
| you stupid.
|
| But a lot of art simply _is_ , while the intention is completely
| secondary. Nobody would look at a nice sunset and be upset at the
| fact that it doesn't have a clear meaning behind it. This lack of
| meaning is very easy to ignore with art which you think is nice
| (e.g. a painting of said sunset). For more art-headed people the
| same painting of a sunset would be boring, or even kitsch -- what
| does the painting show, that I couldn't see better in real and
| nature? Then I'd rather see something completely unseen, a new
| painting technique, a motive I have never thought about etc.
| nonameiguess wrote:
| You know, ten years into marriage here, my wife has really
| turned me onto David Lynch. I hadn't paid much attention to his
| work before meeting her. I at least saw the most popular films
| one day and vaguely felt like I didn't get them, but there was
| nothing there I'd identify as bad filmmaking or anything. It
| just seemed like it was trying to say something and I wasn't
| getting it.
|
| I no longer feel that way at all. I don't know what flipped. It
| may have been learning that Lynch primarily considers himself a
| painter and he also does a lot of sculpture. He just makes
| movies and television shows because those are better at paying
| the bills. But it seemed pretty obvious after comparing the
| differences between all of the extended universe novelization
| material Mark Frost produced related to Twin Peaks with David
| Lynch's answers when asked if any of that is canon when he just
| says he doesn't care and doesn't even know what the extra
| content is.
|
| There is no hidden meaning I was failing to get. Lynch isn't
| trying to say anything at all. Was Dale Cooper literally living
| in a dream the whole time? It doesn't matter. He's just a
| painter but film happens to be his medium. He's creating
| impressions, in a series sufficiently coherent from one to the
| next that it can be considered a story, but it's not like
| reading Robert Jordan or something. There is no vast
| encyclopedia of notes and in-universe history where what was
| really happening the whole time is explained. It's just
| impressionism on film. At some point, I became okay with that
| and stopped falling into the Reddit fan-theory holes with
| everything I watch. It became okay to just appreciate the
| quality of the images and acting performances and realize this
| is fiction. It doesn't have to be constrained by the logical
| causal physics of reality. It can tell stories with dream logic
| even if the point of that isn't to say you're literally
| watching the dreams of another person who inhabits some
| physically real world that you aren't shown.
| atoav wrote:
| This is it. Why are there three birds (crows?) above that
| field in Van Gogh's painting?
|
| The answer is: who cares -- they bring something to the
| painting, and no explaination would greatly change that.
| Maybe a _definite_ explaination would even hurt the mystery
| and thus the reception.
|
| The value of some art lies in what it means to _you_ , the
| mental doors it opens or the emotions it tingles. All of this
| can be so subjective that any explaination is ultimately
| without any real value.
|
| Sure it is interesting to know if Van Gogh used those birds
| elsewhere, or what they might represent for himself, with his
| moving biography. But when I am looking at that picture, all
| of that is not important.
| carlosjobim wrote:
| > The problem many people have with these modern things is that
| they think of art as something one can "parse" into a specific
| intended meaning.
|
| No, I think that is a prejudice of people who think they are
| better at appreciating art than others.
|
| Normal people like abstract art, experimental music, and other
| stuff that is different and open for interpretation - as long
| as it's good.
|
| But they don't like subpar productions made by talentless
| people, just because these people have gone through all the
| superficial rites of becoming "artists" and have a community of
| group-narcissists to feed on.
| benrutter wrote:
| > Culturally curious people, young and old, seem to accept that a
| "challenging" painting--or modern dance work, or play, or
| independent film--can be exciting, mind-expanding, really cool,
| and sort of out there precisely because it's challenging. Why in
| classical contemporary music do so many people equate challenging
| with intimidating--or even infuriating?
|
| I think that misses that a lot of "challenging" music that isn't
| Schoenberg is very widely accepted. Composers like Glass or Cage
| are popular enough to be used in film soundtracks.
|
| I don't think there's necessary anything about music over visyal
| arts that means people don't like "challenging" or "experimental"
| music, but Schoenberg for whatever reason hasn't ever reached a
| wide level of popularity.
| codeulike wrote:
| _Culturally curious people, young and old, seem to accept that
| a "challenging" painting--or modern dance work, or play, or
| independent film--can be exciting, mind-expanding, really cool,
| and sort of out there precisely because it's challenging. Why
| in classical contemporary music do so many people equate
| challenging with intimidating--or even infuriating?_
|
| Music is different to other art forms.
|
| Not everyone likes dance, not everyone likes paintings, not
| everyone likes theatre, not everyone likes sculpture, not
| everyone likes poetry.
|
| But EVERYONE likes music.
|
| Its fundamental. So when its challenging music, its challenging
| in a more fundamental way than a painting can be challenging.
| mostlylurks wrote:
| No, not everyone likes music [0].
|
| [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Musical_anhedonia
| matthewhammond wrote:
| The difference with visual arts is, because of the way the
| market works avant-garde artists can still be financially
| hugely successful, and their works are correspondingly feted
| and displayed in the gallery temples. So people are more prone
| to be intimidated away from criticising what they don't
| understand, as you can't really argue with money in this
| society, and it projects influence and power anyway. If
| contemporary classical composers were mysteriously making
| millions from their work, they'd probably be treated similarly.
| Also, contemporary classical is really just a small slice of
| avant garde music nowadays, another thing articles like this
| never seem to get.
| ghostpepper wrote:
| I was hoping this would be more about encouraging people to
| listen to music that is generally outside of what they usually
| listen to. For some this would be jazz, others heavy metal, or
| even country music (which many profess to hate).
| squidsoup wrote:
| I've introduced a number of friends to American old time music,
| the progenitor of bluegrass and modern country music, who have
| discovered that there's in fact a lot of wonderful country
| music.
| jzb wrote:
| Usually those types of pieces have an "eat your vegetables"
| vibe to them. While it may be good advice (and is, in the case
| of vegetables) people generally don't listen to music to be
| challenged.
|
| They're seeking familiarity, comfort, joy -- which are hard to
| find in "challenging" music, whether that's genres that they
| don't care for or more experimental music that defies
| conventions.
| nullhole wrote:
| I'll take this opportunity to plug the movie "Untitled" (2009) by
| Jonathan Parker, a light comedy poking loving fun at contemporary
| art.
|
| The lead character is an avant-garde composer, with a strong
| belief in the importance of his work, ignoring (as best he can)
| the mockery of others, and resisting the calls from most of those
| who care about him to use _some_ melody in his work.
| freetime2 wrote:
| Nahre Sol recently put out a video on contemporary classical
| music [1] that, while attempting to correct common misconceptions
| and generally promote it, basically reaffirmed my dislike of the
| genre. The music really speaks for itself, I don't see myself
| ever wanting to listen to this type of music, and no essay or
| other rationalization is going to change the way that I feel when
| I hear it.
|
| And while I don't begrudge the individual composers and
| performers who do make this sort of music - they are of course
| free to follow their own curiosity and passions - it does upset
| me a bit that this where "classical" music has ended up. It feels
| like the academics have hijacked the genre to the detriment of
| casual listeners.
|
| [1] https://youtu.be/cYEke4EsJYM
| squidsoup wrote:
| If you consider Cage, Stockhausen and Glass part of the western
| classical music tradition, then I think we should consider
| composers like Nils Frahm, Olafur Arnalds, Richard Skelton and
| Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith part of that continuum. There are people
| making interesting, innovative music that isn't academic or
| needlessly avant garde, that I think can appeal to everyone.
| Hunpeter wrote:
| There is definitely a lot wrong with the classical music scene
| in general (speaking as a classical pianist - in training).
| Most notably elitism/classism. I guess classical music also has
| lots of image problems and just has trouble finding its place
| in the world. Between the fact that in the last 200 years we've
| started to actually play and listen to older music (not to
| mention composing in older styles), the advent of sound
| recording and then the information age or whatever, it's
| understandable, really.
|
| I myself just feel lucky that I can enjoy most of this
| "challenging" music without needing to care about the
| magnificently strict structure, or how the composer wanted to
| channel God or something. All I ask is that people not question
| my sanity on the grounds of my liking of this kind of music.
| jerf wrote:
| Music as a whole clearly decided to go in a direction
| deliberately away from what any "normal" person would like. They
| dress it up in plenty of other words, but it's clear by the way
| nothing will attract their disdain like anything that a normal
| person might like that this is certainly a core component of
| where academic music decided to go. I know this from personal
| experience. They don't even particularly hide it if it's not the
| direct topic of conversation, it is only denied when directly
| challenged, a sort of psychological motte & bailey ploy.
|
| That's fine. That's all their right, even the last bit. I'm
| hardly in a position to insist that disliking, or at the very
| least _distrusting_ , something when the only thing I know about
| it is that it is popular is invalid myself. We take very
| different approaches to that, but I can't deny what I do is close
| enough that it would be hypocritical to criticize too much.
|
| But it is pretty stupid to write handwringing articles about "Why
| don't they like us?" You collectively wrote music that blares in
| every tone that you don't _want_ normies to like you. You chased
| them away for decades. You collectively berated and mocked them
| in both words and music.
|
| What did you collectively expect?
|
| I suppose those who joined in the process late and learned the
| methods of disdain without the reason underlying them might be
| confused, but I can promise those people that there is no
| scenario where the common person suddenly acquires a taste for
| music that basically musically reads as "screw the common person
| and everything they stand for", in addition to whatever else it
| may be saying.
|
| If you want the normies to like you, _you_ are going to have to
| at least _inch_ closer to _them_ first. Maybe the normies could
| use some mind-expansion, but right now you are so far away from
| where the normies are that you are barely on the same planet.
|
| You don't want to. You're not going to. That's fine. All I'm
| really asking for is for you to stop being surprised about the
| results. When you tell people to fuck off, they do.
| standardUser wrote:
| > Why in classical contemporary music do so many people equate
| challenging with intimidating--or even infuriating?
|
| I assume the wording "classical contemporary" is deliberate, but
| it sounds all wrong. Shouldn't it be "contemporary classical" aka
| "modern classical"?
|
| They also use it once in the article. Is this a widely used
| naming convention for this type of music?
| darkerside wrote:
| There's an art to making the challenging accessible. Before
| listening to Take Five by Dave Brubek, I think most people never
| would have guessed that a 5/4 time signature could sound so
| natural.
| Tainnor wrote:
| It's mostly only Western European / American popular music that
| (for some reason thaf I don't quite understand) is obsessed
| with 4/4. In many other cultures (e.g. Eastern European folk
| music, but many others as well), irregular meters are quite
| common.
| handy2000 wrote:
| 5/4 isn't that challenging of a time signature. I would argue
| it's just uncommon and so most people associate it with Take
| Five. 3/4 was extremely popular in Europe for centuries and is
| not perceived as challenging.
| zozbot234 wrote:
| 5/4 is actually ambiguous because the "5" can be any of 3+2,
| 2+3, 2+1+2 etc. Similar issues for 7/4, etc. 4/4, 3/4 and 6/8
| may have rhythmic variations too (e.g. the 3+3+2 tresillo
| rhythm common in rock-and-roll music) but these don't impact
| the metrical understanding of the music to anything near that
| extent.
| leephillips wrote:
| There's nothing particularly unnatural or even unfamiliar about
| 5/4. Also, "Take Five" was not written by Dave Brubeck.
| cushpush wrote:
| Is A440Hz or 432Hz? This to me is a larger question than
| composition styles.
| feoren wrote:
| Literally pick one and then forget about it. Or split the
| difference and make it 436Hz if you want. It literally does not
| matter.
| badloginagain wrote:
| Let your ears decide:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ghUs-84NAAU
| jeffreysmith wrote:
| 415!
| hellotheretoday wrote:
| 440 is the international standard as of around the 18th century
| iirc. Before that it varies a bit from 430-450hz depending on
| region and time period. 432 is mostly about preference although
| its origins go back to setting c as perfect integers. With this
| tuning c4 is 256hz, c5 512hz, etc whereas at a4=440 c4 is
| 261.63hz.
|
| https://roelsworld.eu/432-tuning/the-scale-of-fifths/ this goes
| far more in depth
|
| It's ultimately just preference though. To that end some
| symphonies use other options, ny philharmonic uses 442, Boston
| symphony 441, etc. When I marched and teched drum corp we did
| 442 because that's what the marimbas were tuned to plus we
| performed outside in the cold so going up a touch helped as the
| cold would generally pull everything flat.
| feoren wrote:
| Mike Verta is a Hollywood composer who has put out a lot of great
| videos on composition, and he makes great points on this (he has
| since become an insane alt-right nutjob, unfortunately, but his
| old videos are still up).
|
| He tells a story about stopping at a red light next to a woman
| who was absolutely _jamming out_ to some hip-hop song. Her car is
| shaking, she 's shouting the lyrics with a big smile on her face,
| just completely engrossed in this music that everyone who
| considers themself a "composer" would turn their nose up at; not
| "real music", of course. And he thought: I would be _elated_ if I
| pulled up and saw someone connecting like that to my music. Isn
| 't that why I got into composing in the first place? To bring
| about _that_ in people? Why else would you want to be a composer?
| To join the circle-jerk and feel infinitely superior to all those
| stupid normies?
|
| Many of these composers write this way because they simply cannot
| write tonal music well. It's too hard. Writing music with
| original colors and style, but is still tonal and still resonates
| with actual human beings? That's _tremendously difficult_. Avant-
| garde composers avoid doing this because they _can 't_. They
| write atonal shit because it's much, much easier.
|
| The idea is that you've failed as a composer if the "common man"
| can relate _at all_ to your music is one of the most elitist
| attitudes a human can possibly hold. Normal listeners ' brains
| are _so far_ beneath yours that if they can recognize any form of
| structure, melody, or harmony at all in your music, then it must
| be _trash normie_ music. It 's the exact premise of the Emperor's
| New Clothes story and it's amazing how long this bubble has
| lasted. Shame on everyone who thinks this way.
|
| Imagine being the one who takes these "challenging" musical ideas
| and presents them in a way that listeners can actually
| intuitively understand. Imagine pulling in listeners with what
| they know, and then taking them on a journey into the previously
| unknown, and having them be _with you_ the whole time. Now _that
| 's_ a damn-good modern composer! Of course, the vast majority of
| modern composers would wallow in despair if such a thing happened
| to their big-brained magnum opus -- _normies_ understanding
| _their_ music!?
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