Open thread for discussion and questions related to the first of the six-part series.
The Rest is Noise, Part One. A consideration of Part One of The Rest is Noise: the primary aesthetic streams of early 20th Century music - Strauss, Schoenberg, and Stravinsky – and their legacy into the present.
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4 comments:
Hi—Fun 1st lecture in your series. In terms of back-&-forth dialogue, as you’re choosing events/multi-instrument & opera-backing-music examples/select composers (tracking in part Ross’ text)/poignancies/etc),
1. I’m wondering how to tackle/incorporate/ponder the relative importance/acceptance/drama/recognition/whatever of contributions along-the-way of those “elements” that you won’t have time to discuss, e.g. end-of-19th C. Brahms’ or Rheinberger’s [maverick] dissonances (do you think such is far-fetched to lead into early ‘modernism’/whatever-that-is-to-be-in-your-ideas-development and/or how to find amore completely “resonating” compilation of ideas about this important “Beyond the Noise” framework?). that you have chosen, to use multi-instrument examples & select composers
2. Am also wondering if you think individual solo works [e.g. the Satie example(s) you gave], much less chamber music works, might be worse, equivalent, or better examples of how some of these exciting/individualistic/maybe-arrogant/maybe-soothsayer composers could help me as a listener figure out where & how I should teach myself (even incrementally) to understand what is often difficult-for-me-to-yet-listen-to, but which simultaneously, I will tell you, gives me goose bumps often when I’m listening to such listening-difficult (maybe not composing-difficult) stuff.
3. In thinking, in fact, about Schoenberg, what in hell—so to speak—did he expect the listener to hear, in trying to maybe ask that listener to find an “anchor” to deal with, and then move on to other maybe-new-units, maybe-new-anchors, maybe-12-tonal-development sounds, maybe-philosophical-rapture (I guess that’s tongue-in-cheek, but not meant to be pejorative). He had his composer’s-dream of those architectural/defined units, but I’m seriously asking the question of whether he may have been rapturing himself in his own intellectually-designer-music-composition rather than figuring out a really great way to capture, not rapture, his audience.
John, sorry for such rambling & too many non-useful word questions, but I’m interested in your target to entice and awaken folks to appreciate—and enjoy—contemporary musical repertoire. I can’t make the next few of your sessions, but will try to come to most of the latter ones. Cheers presently, Charles M
Here is the Schoneberg quote that some of you asked me to post after the first class:
“There is a morality of art, to serve as a counterpoint to this world that is in many respects giving itself up to amoral, success-ridden materialism in the face of which all the ethical preconditions of our art are steadily disappearing.”
Hello Charles...thanks for getting this rolling. To answer your ruminations in #1 and #2, I will indeed be using many examples of work outside of the orchestral music and opera paradigm that Ross generally focuses on. Something that is not particularly addressed in Ross' book is the idea held by many 20th Century composers that the orchestra became a "dead" or irrelevant instrument - something we might have a more nuanced perspective on today, but which informed the selection of genre and aesthetic for many many important composers in the 20th Century. In the format of a short course like this, the best I can do is give brief examples of what I believe are signal works and examples, and point you to more information and recordings.
Re Schoenberg, I believe many listeners are indeed captured by his music. He may have as you suggest been taken by his method, but when it came to applying the method with his compositional skill, he created and used many traditional musical devices that could be regarded as thematic anchors for formalist unity. This would digress into a music theory course to fully illustrate, but Schoenberg's work is a case where familiarity reveals more and more to appreciate and use as framework for hearing. Cheers, John
I played excerpts of these works in class one:
Richard Strauss – Salome’s Dance
Gustav Mahler – Symphony No. 10, Movement I
Arnold Schoenberg – Five Pieces for Orchestra, movement III, Farben
Anton Webern – Six Pieces for Orchestra, op. 6, movement IV Funeral March
Erik Satie – Vexations
Stravinsky – The Rite of Spring
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