I came home drunk last night (this morning) and wrote a brief diatribe on twentieth century symphony then somehow had the sense not to post it... And now in the clear light of sobriety I change my mind. Enjoy:)
"Dude,
Here’s the thing with a lot of the twentieth century composers of classical
music. They were in such a mood of
“my art is so damn brilliant you can’t even understand” that part of the
era’s aesthetic became being really unintelligible. So you take something like
Mahler or Shostakovich and listen to his symphonies and you realize that when
he rails hard in that music he fucking rails SO hard, but then when he goes off
the deep end and gets all introspective he goes so far beyond what’s cool to
anyone but himself. Like take
Shostakovich 8th symphony: I guarantee that this piece would
absolutely dominate your mind if you sat down and really engaged your ears and
brain with the entire thing, but I also guarantee you wont even be able to stay
awake until that point because there’s so much ‘weird’ shit that would bore you
before then. It’s like there was
Penderecki and there was Shoenburg and this is what falls inbeetween. Same goes for Mahler, if you can make it all the way through one of his symphonies to the epic finale scherzo movement it will blow your mind, but I guarantee you you WONT make it all the way through. He has a symphony where it's written in the score that the horn players fucking stand up in the finale so that they can have maximum force. like a boss.. BUT the thing with Shostakovic is
that he had to play the delicate balancing act between appealing to Stalin’s
taste and appealing to the peoples’ taste and that balancing act became an art
in itself."
This piece by Frederic Rzewski is a flamboyant example of the "theme and variations" form. There is the initial stated theme (at 0:43 after he finishes thoroughly adjusting the sheet music), and then several variations of that theme follow. This is not quite the same type of theme and variations that would be heard in Mozart's day, in the modern era composers are able to take many more liberties with their variations. In the following video variations begin at 0:54, 1:23, then a transition from 1:51 to 2:00 and into a violent variation which lasts until 2:12 when an airy, abstract variation takes over and so forth... see if you can follow along.
This form always makes me think of the forth movement of Brahms' forth symphony which follows the form: passacaglia. A passacaglia is similar to a theme and variations; A simple bassline is stated, then repeats throughout the entirety of the piece while the accompaniment changes. I have posted this piece before but here it is again... try to hear the repetition in the bass as stated by the low brass in the beginning.
This piece by Alfred Schnittke may at first sound like the thousands of other hymns you have heard in your life, but really turn on your ears and engage your brain on this one and you will find something more. This is a lesson on harmony. Harmony is combination of tones. Listen to the chords, the tones which sound together are not the same major and minor chords we usually hear in classical music, and furthermore the progression of chords and the cadences (where the progressions end up) stand apart from much of what you may have grown up singing in church... ENJOY!
For contrast, a good excersise would be to listen to 30 seconds or so of the first, then spend the same amount of time on this more "traditional" hymn and see if you can hear the difference.
Today we discuss the one concept which has its grip so tightly locked around modern music that it will define this era when considered in retrospect by scholars in centuries to come. That concept is called "timbre." This post is very long and comprehensive, but it is without question the most important post thus far and those who can find the time to absorb it will reap great benefits.
Timbre - In simple terms, timbre is what makes a particular musical sound different from another, even when they have the same pitch and loudness.
That is the most straightforward definition I can find online. Timbre is the quality of a sound. It is the difference between the sound of my voice singing middle C and a trumpet playing middle C and a violin playing middle C.
A friend once asked me pessimistically "Where are the musical geniuses of today? Why is there no living Bach or Mozart or Beethoven?" One has only to look in the right places to find them...
A Brief Historical Overview:
Throughout the history of Western Classical music the pendulum of aesthetic preference has swung back and forth between the intellectual and the emotional, the contrived and the primal, brain music and heart music. This undulation has been steadily accelerating. Of course in every era the greatest masters are those able to bridge the gap and uncompromisingly fulfill both sides of the musical spectrum.
In the Baroque era (approx. 1600-1750) the defining musical concept was counterpoint. Composers like Bach relied on counterpoint to get their emotive messages across to listeners. To generalize, there were essentially two dynamics (loud and soft), and everything ended with a major key cadence. The baroque era was characterized by outlandish sorties into uncharted and emotionally rich, dissonant harmonic grounds. Heart music. It is no wonder that the work of J.S.Bach stands out from this era as particularly masterful because his scores were also so intellectually rigorous that a student of music can find enjoyment in them with only her or his eyes.
The classical era (1750-1827) ushered in many new musical structures and arrangement styles. Categories like "Symphony" and "String Quartet" became crystallized by Haydn and Mozart and adherence was paid to rules of key and modulation and tonal centers... Long story short the emphasis was on structure and form. The classical period was one which emphasized the intellectual side of the music which is probably why Beethoven's temperamental style pushed the genre beyond its former limits.Fun fact, the term "scherzo" now widely used to describe a fast, stylized dance movement really means "joke." It originated when Haydn would make sections at the end of his string quartets which sounded like several fake endings before the piece actually died. There are accounts of players sight reading these pieces for the first time and bursting out laughing because they found the false endings so funny! Example.
Beethoven is either seen as the end of the classical period or the beginning of the Romantic period (My favorite of periods). I date the Romantic period from 1800-1900. The music of this period is characterized by sweeping melodies and more developed, daring harmonies. The guiding/defining musical concept washarmonyandmelody of course continued to develop and play a great role in shaping the music. Composers began stepping outside of the traditional structures and experimenting with all of the harmonic tools at their disposal to evoke great emotion. Less importance was placed on adherence to strict rules of form and structure. The term "Romantic" does not refer to romantic love, but to the expressionism and passion ubiquitous in art of the era. Heart music.
The late 1800s and early 1900s saw the birth of impressionism. Composers such as Debussy began experimenting with scales and harmonies outside of the usual major and minor. By definition, impressionistic music is highly personal and left up to the listener's interpretation, rather than being explicit and striving to reach a universal emotive standard like the music of Romanticism. It is about the listener's individual impression rather than the composer's universal expression. This lead into Atonal and 12 tone serial music. Schoenburg and his followers created a system which treats each of the twelve tones equally and therefore has no key and some would say no emotive content... very few people find enjoyment from listening to 12 tone serial music, but occasionally scholars will sit down and examine the musical scores and figure out the intricate patterns of notes. Mind music.
A quick, colorful intro to 12 tone serial music:
Why waste all that breath on the past? In the 20th century, classical music splintered and with the advent of new recording and communication technology music took several new directions. I trace one more general pendulum swing to heart music and back before we arrive at the present but music has taken so many divergent paths that it becomes more difficult to generalize. HOWEVER the point of looking at past eras is to determine the musical characteristics which drove the creative and musical evolution of the times. Obviously Rhythm and Melody came as soon as we began banging sticks on things and singing, then counterpoint, structure, harmony, even mathematical purity have all had their time as the driving forces in music.
What drives music today? What is the force which pushes it along and separates this from other eras? Where is all of today's genius focused?
TIMBRE
With the technological explosion of the past twenty to thirty years, our capabilities of making new sounds have become virtually limitless. On top of other obvious benefits, electronic media allow composers to hear what they produce as they produce it; the equivalent would be having an orchestra with you at all times while composing a symphony so that you could constantly tweak the sound to perfection. The great parallel between classical composition and electronic composition is that both require the mental task of manipulating notes on a canvas (page or computer screen) to be performed by someone else. As far as the skill sets go, the two are no different from one another. The main distinction is that it is a lot easier in this day and age to come across a computer program which will play your music than it is an orchestra. I say with %100 certainty that if Beethoven were alive today he would be producing electronic music.
Those who claim that music is not developing, or that it is getting dumbed down, are not observing just how far the quality of recorded sound has come in mere decades. Just because a piece repeats the same chords over and over again doesn't mean that the engineering of the sound carries no intellectual weight. That said, the best artists are always those who integrate the common trends with a more timeless sensibility in regards to musical balance.
Obviously nobody can say definitively who the greatest musician alive is, but if you ask me it's Richard D. James. This was my answer when my friend asked where all the modern geniuses had gone. James accomplished things with electronic media twenty years ago which current musicians are still hard-pressed to replicate. His work has shaped modern classical, popular, and electronic music and left a lasting impact on today's creative paradigm. Here is an electronic piece of his produced more than fifteen years ago, and here is a more classical piece of his from the same album. ALL of the glitched out mind-dance music (even some of the Brittany tracks I've heard recently) you have ever heard has in some way been influenced by James, he is the pioneer.
Then why hasn't he been recognized as such by the classical community? He has. The BBC and other orchestras have recorded orchestral versions of several of his pieces. Composers such as Stockhausen were openly influenced by his work.
Here's a great remix he did combining composer Philip Glass's "Heroes" with David Bowie's "Heroes"
Creepy.
The electronic musicians are not the only ones, though, to discover the power of new timbres. Many contemporary classical composers are venturing into uncharted sonic territories (as seen in the video at the top of the post). Across the board, Timbre is the edge, the frontier in musical evolution today, and in the history books you can bet it will be the characteristic by which this era in music is remembered. Where do we go from here? Remember, the great composers are those who are able to use the current creative discoveries outside of the limited context of the current trends. We are already seeing a dialogue between classical and electronics; classical music's evolution comes when the timbrel tools of today are seamlessly incorporated into the rich tradition which has been passed to us over hundreds of years in written notation.
It's beginning to happen:
An interesting phenomenon has cropped up with classical musicians performing renditions of electronic music... since they don't have the same tools of timbre they are forced to take their own liberties with the arrangements to make up for it. Take this piano version of "Blood Red" by Feed Me:
In order to honor the value of contemporary music's contribution to the Western Classical tradition, from here on out Friday will be Nick's Picks day in which my brother Nick Rex "Riot" Valente chooses one electronic piece which I will dissect from a classical standpoint. Nick is a prolific electronic musician whose album "Beyond" is out today on Play Me Too Records.
