"Contemporary" music

The hardest thing is to notice and recognize, without hindsight, the genius ... the basic ingredient for writing a masterpiece.

A discourse too difficult for me.

To me, the Great Fugue doesn't drive me crazy; I find the atmospheres produced by the 1980 piece to be peculiar and sometimes unsettling.

Tiger wrote:

...one of the few, there are those who claim that indeed Beethoven does not know how to write a fugue

Well, of course he is not remembered in music history for his skills as a supreme counterpoint master, what does that have to do with it?

The Great Fugue is a masterpiece not only because it is a fugue, but because of the enormous romantic and avant-garde scope of its musical message...

Tiger wrote:

Whether an individual notices it or not is irrelevant

I agree: I said the same thing in my previous post.

Tiger wrote:

Chopin himself considered himself a piano master... and that's it (and he was a genius and wrote masterpieces)

This observation is not pertinent. Find me a composer who, upon writing the last note of a piece, said "this is a masterpiece."

Most masterpieces in music history were written with a completely different purpose than becoming part of history. It is not an issue that concerns only Chopin.

Tiger wrote:

... without offense to anyone, but if even he can be wrong...

... we can all be wrong, it's true. Everyone.

Carlos wrote:

... we can all make mistakes, it's true. Everyone.

Finally agree. It remains to be understood if it is necessary to review something already recognized ... and I am not talking about Harvey ...

Vitrus wrote:

I am sorry for giving the impression of being a consumer of commercial radio music... and here, dear GnazzzJazz, it was, perhaps, a tad sad...

I agree that it is not just a matter of taste but, by the third listen, if the piece does not decline, one tends toward masochism. If a work requires repeated and in-depth listening to try to accept it, or rather to process a sense in which to find oneself within it, well, I doubt objectively and subjectively that it is such, at least in the field of Music and health.....

Happy listening

There is a misunderstanding: I do not know what you listen to and I do not make assumptions regarding it (and if I were to guess, they would be quite different). The consumers of commercial music (a whispered expression, which has been ignored so far) were my schoolmates, whom I did not criticize for this anyway, but rather for their closed approach to listening to everything else. Your sentences, deliberately harsh, reminded me of this situation. If we really wanted to draw a parallel, though it was not my intention, we would have to consider the proper proportions: I cited Genesis and not Bach, Schoenberg, Bartok, Stockhausen or Cage, whom I did listen to)

Instead, I reported it to introduce the theme of the approach to listening, which could carry weight in determining certain summary and global judgments on "contemporary music"

Regarding Jonathan Harvey's Mortuos plango, vivos voco, I must say that the evolution and elaboration of the dialogue and the intertwining between the white voice (boy soprano) and the bell does not displease me and does not bore me, even if at first listen I must say it doesn't drive me crazy; the material does not seem very rich to me, but this can also be a positive side; I will certainly listen to it again.

I think that discussions about listening also apply to Liszt and so on, absolutely! And that the preponderance and proliferation of certain observations regarding contemporary music is simply due to a cultural fact and education in general.

As for Cage's 4'33", I find it brilliant and moving; many things could be said, one cannot answer in two lines. Of course, putting it on a CD makes no sense, but recreating it at home is not bad...

for shit, one can turn to Freud, or it seems to me that even Roger Waters (or one of them) has recorded something that we listen to our whole lives with a circadian rhythm...

It has already been discussed, but perhaps treating music as a closed system is limiting, especially in modern times, where paradoxically we apply it more.

To say that something is beautiful is a provocation precisely because it states objectivity (a matter of language) and the impossibility of dissent; it is often done benevolently in search of pleasant and highly probable consensus, but sometimes one is left feeling bad... Sometimes it is even irritating to hear it said! I would put it more on the statistical side and say, for example, that beauty (or ugliness) at probability 1 does not exist, and that the statistical distribution depends on the chosen sample, and that this is where cultural weight comes in...

thanks to everyone for the suggested listens!

I'm opening a parenthesis, perhaps a bit late (here it is!): sometimes my arguments may seem polemical, but the intention is simply to provoke benevolently, by taking a concept to its extreme consequences.

Now that I have a few minutes, I am listening to the pieces.

Iannis Xenakis - La Legende d'Eer :

Rather complex; from what I understand, Xenakis composes based on mathematical formulas (correct me if I'm wrong!), consequently, to fully appreciate the piece, listening alone is not enough for me; I would need to understand the compositional process. However, this type of writing, even if it can produce interesting results, seems a bit mechanical to me. Let's just say my impression is that the underlying idea is more interesting than the results themselves.

Franco Donatoni - LEM :

Interesting; I find it to be quite a canonical piece regardless. Needs analysis.

György Ligeti, various

You can't command the heart :-)

Iannis Xenakis - Mélanges :

Same as above, although personally I like it more than the previous one.

Krzysztof Penderecki, various

Strong emotional impact, I like it. P.S. who are the people in the videos?

Jonathan Harvey - Mortuos Plango, Vivos Voco :

I don't dislike it; I don't know how many other times I would listen to it, it requires some study (speaking for myself).

Does anyone know "Teimo" and "Permafrost" by Thomas Köner?

DrJellyfish wrote:

You are not at all unpleasant to me and I share many of your arguments, but I must make a point: when you say "If you look at a plate of pasta and want to find the 'beauty' in it, then you will find it" you are not answering my question regarding the parameters for evaluating music, and contemporary music in particular. It is true that what one likes is beautiful, but at this point any kind of evaluation fails; one work of art (or not) is worth another, it is subjective. And I also doubt that it is a quantitative fact, otherwise Michael Jackson would be more of an "artist" than Andriessen or Fontana.

The discussion is becoming very dense, but I return to this message.

I haven't answered this question yet simply because I hadn't noticed it was there :-) every one of your messages is full of insights, so one naturally makes a choice.

The parameters for evaluating music are always the same, regardless of what type of music is being discussed. They change depending on the type of evaluation you want to make and, therefore, the "role" you decide to take regarding that music.

Do you want to be the listener? Then you evaluate the piece according to criteria of subjective taste. And there, the parameters are subjective and highly variable... when Carlos says he couldn't make it past the third minute of that piece (I didn't go crazy listening to it either... but it is interesting), he gives a judgment of subjective taste. So, even if he is a very well-informed listener, he tends to evaluate his own preferences.

Everything that is not "listener-and-that's-it" evaluation becomes much more complicated. I believe there is no single technical-musical level. That is, returning to Carlos, I don't think a musician can give technical evaluations on everything, and I don't believe all technical evaluations are of the same type. A singer will evaluate an opera differently from a conductor, and I am not talking in terms of taste, I am talking in technical terms. Donizetti's works are a glaring example: beautiful from a melodic-vocal point of view, banal from a harmonic-orchestral point of view.

In this sense, the evaluation of a composition must seek, in my opinion, to be as closely linked to precise criteria as possible. If one wants to say that a composition is "boring," one should say it by talking about something precise. I don't know, the formal structure, the sounds, or what it is. Because one thing is being bored by PRECISE DATA, and another thing is being bored because one hasn't found the right way to listen. In other words, Bruckner can be boring, but not for technical reasons.

Among technical evaluations, the one that in my opinion remains THE technical evaluation par excellence is the historical one (not the compositional one). A composition is of high value if 1) it was considered of high value by its contemporary audience 2) it has survived the passage of time 3) it has influenced in some way (even conversely) the developments of history and the history of the arts. Obviously, it makes no sense to give historical evaluations that are "simplistic"... that is, J.S. Bach has great historical value, but different from that which Telemann had (the usual comparison). Neither greater nor lesser, but different. Saying that Bach was the greatest composer of the Baroque era is not a technical evaluation; it is a cliché.

Being more or less a contemporary music enthusiast, I have found myself more than once elaborating judgments or evaluations on compositions about which I knew nothing. Writing reviews for L'Opera, I happened to do so in as professional a manner as possible... I have built a series of methods, then.

The first criterion, for me, is always and anyway that of "success," which means the number of performances/executions. It is a factor also linked to the composer's name, but a contemporary composition played often becomes de facto an important composition. Allevi is historically important. I am one of those who would read a serious essay on Allevi, because Allevi is the present. We might not like it, but HISTORICAL evaluation also has to do with the history of bad things.

Second criterion: pleasantness. In other words, a judgment of subjective taste—I am on the side of subjectivity, and that has been seen. I believe that technicians are people, who must sign with their first and last names and who, therefore, must resign themselves to the idea that every one of their "technical" opinions is, in reality, full of personal preconceptions. And this is where argumentation comes into play (which I have already spoken about at length). The difference between a useless opinion and an interesting opinion lies in the argumentation, in the reasons behind the opinion.

Third criterion: history (perhaps of genre). I always try to introduce works into a system of genres, which perhaps doesn't exist, but which helps establish relationships. Saying that Lucio Dalla is simpler than Berio is obvious, but Dalla writes songs and must be placed within that tradition... this"}

presuppone conoscenze se non sai cosa ha fatto Harvey nella sua vita, non puoi fino in fondo inserirlo in un'estetica...

Vitrus wrote:

this is a response to GazzJazz who says:

"It makes me think of when at school I used to try to reveal to my classmates that listening to Genesis (just one example) was much more pleasant for me than listening to most of the light music being pushed on the radio, and that it probably would have become so for them too if they had had the patience to listen to it a couple more times... It's not just a matter of taste, but also of willingness to listen and trust in others"

And then, is it the listener who gives aesthetic value to the work, or not?, perhaps after the first listen or after repeated listens.. or not?

Then if a work always makes you ca..re (I believe three listens are sufficient), well... that is the value that the listener attributes to that work.

Put like that, it is very different from how you put it the first time. This is a judgment of personal taste. You, in your opinion, in your own way, if after 3 listens you don't like it, then you don't like it

thallo wrote:

Set up like this, it is very different from how you set it up the first time. This is a judgment of personal taste. You, in your own opinion, if after 3 listens you don't like it, then you don't like it.

...well, this is all that each of us can limit ourselves to doing, namely giving our own judgment (which has its value).. the real value of the work is known, perhaps, only by the composer

Hi everyone, this is art tatum speaking, I had to change my nickname.

A me quel pezzo piace un casino, ce l'ho in un disco dove compare anche

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KY0sgFmsI_I

e anche questo mi piace.

Do solo un giudizio di gusto tanto per fare un piacere a Fkt che voleva qualche fb.....

bonne journèe

Open content (youtube)

Hi Art, in fact I was wondering who that MicaMahler friend of Frank was... good to see you again

DrJellyfish wrote:

Does anyone know "Teimo" and "Permafrost" by Thomas Köner?

...link?

DrJellyfish wrote:

Krzysztof Penderecki, various

Strong emotional impact, I like it. P.S. whose videos are these?

... it's written in the credits ... Sadik something ...

AbateFaria wrote:

... it's written in the credits ... Sadik something ...

Thanx! Damn, don't let them catch me not having listened to it until the end!

AbateFaria wrote:

...link?

i think they are on youtube, then I'll look

- I must say Micamahler is a nice nickname... -

DrJellyfish wrote:

don't let me get caught not listening to it until the end!

:D

...it's that you weren't also supposed to look at the images, you were only supposed to listen ...

Right! I was listening with my eyes closed to be more focused

I've read through some of the backlogs, I see you guys have been going at it with the posts.

In the meantime, I thank those who gave me feedback on the listening; I was sorry not to have read that of the topic creator, good Vitrus … did I somehow miss it?

Warm regards to Micamahler

As I expected, tastes differ and in my opinion the folk saying holds true: "It is not what is beautiful that is beautiful, but what is pleasing"; however, we professionals (un)fortunately can also make considerations of a more technical nature, as competence and the specificities of each musician fall into this field.

I defined that Harvey track as relevant (not a masterpiece) because I have good reasons to support it, obviously technical ones and not based on taste.

Besides, I think he is a musician who lasts, so I suggest enthusiasts cultivate his work.