The Cult of the New?

Of course the idea itself of "new music" is a difficult one to deal with.Think about it : most of what has been marketed as "future sound of something " in the last decade was harmonically flat and was based on few preset synth sounds . the newness usually concerns lifestyles connected to musical trends . I experienced some fresh listening experience with very old sound materials. I don't think that I ever judged something using the " how new" criterium . Left alone the fact that magazine never cope with radical shifts in music productions , if else we could have had japanese 80's noise trend or new computer aided concrete composition and not speedgarage (with its cocaine,its champagne ,its versace suits....)

Nitsuh: you've posed the question beautifully, with great clarity and balance. 'Props' for that.

I don't yet feel able to respond properly (?) to the issue you've raised. A couple of personal feelings:

By and large, I'm not interested in the cult of the new. That's what loads of other people on ILM etc are into - whether it be 'Destiny's Child' or 'Daft Punk' or whatever - and obviously it has nowt to say to me.

As a Lloyd Cole fan, I think that what's underrated in pop is just Doing The Same Thing Over Again But Slightly Differently, so that people who like that thing that you do can keep scraping some kind of meagre consolation out of pop.

I probably contradict this principle, though, when I say stuff like: "Jeez, [Band x] have released the same LP 10 times in the last 10 years, blah blah". Presumably the difference is simply that I don't like [Band x] and the way they sound, whereas I do like Lloyd.

I wrote a mini-essay promoting increasing newness in music a couple of years ago (too naive to bother repeating/linking to here, but the main thrust was that people should stop even thinking about music and start trying to capture household implements in their soundscapes etc), and have been meaning to compose one in response, as my views have changed to some extent.

However, I do still think that you should strive to do something _new_ with music, but no longer think that includes rejecting the idea of music itself. It should involve taking your influences (including both adoration and repulsion) and turning them inside out, making a fresh statement from the tools you have.

It is impossible to make something that is music rather than, say, a cake, that is unlike anything that has been done before. All you can do is evolve, and the 'explosions' of supposedly new music are merely things which have been brewing for some time breaking into the mass consciousness.

Basically, I think people should accept it, and make music that injects a feeling into the listener that, although it has been felt before many times, feels as good as the first time. This can be done over the course of one live set, one seven inch single, or twenty albums and many decades, depending on how long the person/people making the music feel it themselves. It can be contained within an existing genre or carve out its own niche. Personally, I'm as much in love with retro rock'n'roll (for example, The Mystreated) as I am with turntablists and distant electro...

I hope that makes sense without being too obvious...

Depth or Breadth. Old question, and it seems to be a matter of personal taste. I prefer breadth, but then I'm a restless sort and listening to a broad range lets the whole musical landscape play off against itself. Depth can occasionally deliver a really tremendous payoff, with accumulated context suddenly coming home at once. But that takes time that I don't have. Not to mention which, pop artists are more breadth oriented anyway, constantly incorporating whatever they can find, searching for "the new" in their own right, as part of their struggle to survive. Which I think is GRATE.

You point out how the spirit of the a-g has overtaken rock and indie music since the 60s, but I think it would be instructive to look more at the genealogy of the trend. Being only partially informed, it seems to me that influence in the 60s came from jazz, which had already been undergoing a similar drift since the birth of bebop, possibly before that. As far as I'm aware, much of that shift in jazz was markedly similar to, and probably in part due to, the kind of thinking in western art music that's thought to have urged on the shift from the baroque, to classical, to romantic, to the modern period. It seems to me that that movement was driven by a mistaken idea of what constituted musical "progress" - or better, by the idea that there could even be that kind of progress. This way of thinking was bolstered by the formal approach taken to tonal music; it made it seem as if it was something to be understood more, discovered, pushed, like scientific or mathematical knowledge. (And certainly, this was quite possible, and also a kind of knowledge: but the fact that it was possible didn't imply that it was what had to be done with music.) Lots of people think that this approach broke down with the rise of various atonal composers, and later folks like Cage, Partsch, the minimalists, etc. "They went too far" etc., the implication being that progress is all good and fine, but where are the tunes, man?

The reason I think this is interesting is that rock music doesn't support work toward "progress" of the same sort, because of its different musical materials. Most of its "progress" is in textural, timbral, and perhaps (though I have my doubts) rhythmic innovation. A classical music snob would say that it's all just ("just") style, but that the basic formal elements (i.e. the formal elements western classical music cares about) remain the same. But sometimes it seems to me that rock music is still being driven by the same idea of progress, only muddled somehow because it's not the same sort of "progress". It's not even clear to me how it could be progress at all - better to call it "change".

This is only one angle on the topic, though, it's very large (and at the heart of pop music).

I'd largely agree, Josh, with the idea that's it's "just" style now, at least within the space of a broad genre such as "indie rock" or "chart pop" or "nu metal" --- the formal elements are largely the same (hence the genre classification), but the presentation varies. It's a bit like eating chicken for dinner every night, except that one night you get Caribbean jerk chicken, and the next you get Florentine, and the next it's battered and fried. (New thread coming: which genre is beef? pork? seafood? tofu?)

You're also right about the history of the thing --- obviously, the idea of music as progressive has to stretch back to about the point that a clear division emerged between folk music as craft and composed music as high art. And I suppose we can mention that rock music in and of itself was intended as a progression --- a "paradigm shift," if you happen to like Kuhn that way. But also in the Kuhnian / Structure sense, you have to wonder if there's a particular speed of mini-paradigm shifts that's just too fast for any directed progress to occur, and if so, have we reached it?

Another negative impact I forgot above: this whole thing could also be partially implicated in the fragmentation of music listening now, the dearth of clear consensus favorites with a genre. The constant paradigm shifts tend to lead you into particular pockets and strand you there . . .

So - 'Art does not improve'?

In a crude sense, I think art is like an hourglass. You can use it to keep pace with the time, but in the end you're just flipping the damn thing over and over again.

Well, you can always not use it for that, duh. (Grim-sounding thoughts coming from the keyboard of S. Clover today...)

It's difficult, aesthetically, to argue that art can "improve" --- but I think what we're talking about here is a desire to create music that's uniquely representative of a particular moment. Not improvement --- just a gradual change that reflects the ever- particular situation of the listener.

music has to follow technology involved in both composing methods and recording. I don't think there has to be the deliberate will to sound as a product of a given era to be it . as far as I'm concerned the word "avantgarde"(looking back to its war's idiom origins) relates to the evolutionary point of view on art and it ceased to describe anything ,in the last 50 or 60 years.

We all want to hear revelatory breakthrough records every other week.

If you look at the total output of the music industry this is just not the case. People who value innovation are vastly outnumbered by people who adhere strictly to ever more narrowly defined and targeted genres and markets. Even on ILM there's by no means a majority of novelty mavens and trend searchers. Truly avant garde musicians, like the one I interview this month on the Momus website, Yximalloo, are still an embattled minority.

Loveless has become the epitome of What a Good Band Does: give us something mind-blowingly new, different, refreshing, something that is Not What We're Already Listening To.

The fact that you have to delve twelve years back to find that example is telling. And okay, maybe Radiohead are currently trying to keep the avant garde banner fluttering, but are Starsailor et al?

Obviously this is more clearly viewed in dance music... Genres are obsolete before you've even heard of them.

The invention of genre is a function of the creativity of critics, not of musicians, who usually refuse genre categories. Maybe critics are doing this because they're bored.

And there's a marketing element involved as well: in an environment where practically anyone can make music that practically anyone can acquire, you'd better be doing something interesting if you want my attention.

Or how about the opposite: 'You'd better be doing exactly the same thing as any number of other bands I like if you want my attention'? That's how all the 'new' 'indie' bands in the UK seem to be launched. Since that thesis relies on the innate conservatism of audiences, it does depressingly well.

(a) It creates ridiculous trends, bandwagons, sub-par "followers," laughable gimmicks and attention-starved concepts, not to mention fashion snobbery ("Speed garage? That is like so 1998").

I imagine pastoral poets in Rome thought the same thing about urban upstarts like Martial, or medieval monks about the church's constant shift from one heresy to another, or 18th century epistolatory novelists about the passing of fashion to gothic romance. Stop the world, we want to get off! Why are all these snobs saying we're out of date already? Why can't everything be timeless? Why can't there be slower, more objective arbitration of style (as long as it judges what we do to be ideal and eternal)? Why can't God be a music critic?

(b) It's made records a lot more repetitive and a lot less varied --- bands concentrate on making one bold, definitive statement, as opposed to penning a diverse and less easily categorized set of songs. (This can be blamed on the sheer amount of music out there these days as well.)

Normally it's the avant garde's job to break repetitions and bring more diverse sounds into the palette. I don't think you can blame it for stifling diversity.

(c) It's shortened the lifespans of perfectly good bands by leading people to dismiss perfectly good second or third albums. Why listen to one band "mature" when you can go elsewhere and recapture the thrill of hearing something fresh and exciting for the first time?

You could also see avant garde experimentation as prolonging bands' lifespans. The Beatles, Radiohead, Momus... What would we do without it? The pop equivalent of Satie's 'Vexations', I fear.

Fuck, a really good thread and I'm eating dinner *and* haven't read half the people mentioned here, so clearly I hate you all, you overeducated critic-dribbling bastards. Wait, no I don't.

Ned's Dumbass Reduction Response: "Breadth and depth both possible. Avant-garde where you find it, not how it is defined by others; nobody born with innate knowledge of everything. Keep listening and surprise yourself, indulge in the past and present equally. Ignore anyone who claims you are uncool, share music with others if they want to know more. Figure anyone who claims to know everything and anything is talking smack. Quote "Jumping Someone's Else Train" to self if feeling frustrated by An Annoying Person, but don't let that define your reaction to anything presented/interpreted for you as new. Repeat as necessary."

To expand on point above: art tends to move by repulsion of reciprocal tendencies. Avant-garde always defined by relationship to mainstream (cf. Tim's still brilliant point on the Pop Tourism thread about indie-rap's adherance to classic beats). Then add what Ned and others have been getting at -- that the movement of art is in some senses subordinated to the movement of the individual -- the best art at a moment is the art you most need. That article I linked by Vygotsky in the Worldview thread touches some on this big complex question: how is culture used in the process of identity-construction/personal growth/learning/et cet.?

Most of the opinions to come are those of a good friend, who has lectured me again and again on subjects close to this; I can't say I agree with them all, but I'll advocate for the devil's advocate:

Firstly, pop music (and its audience) is inherently vastly more conservative than so-called "classical" music. In (attempting to) please the greatest possible number of people, one must compromise far more than any "serious" (I use that word very advisedly) composer would usually agree to. Naturally, a Mahler isn't obliged to sell a million copies, though he ultimately has to collaborate with a conductor and an orchestra--even so, it'd going to be Mahler all the way, or he wouldn't put his name on it.

Secondly, the avant-garde in pop music is always years if not decades behind the avant-garde in classical music. One might pick The Beatles' "Tomorrow Never Knows" as a landmark work in pop music, but many of its musical ideas had already been worked over by non-pop composers in various ways (Ives, Hohvahness, Harrison, Nancarrow--you might be able to take your pick). What the Velvet Underground was doing in 1967 would have seemed old-hat to many in the avant-garde circles of five or ten years before (ask Yoko Ono). Satie was doing a pretty good Eno impersonation nearly a century before "Music For Airports." In classical music, the avant-garde almost always retains its upper hand in the end, while pop is nailed within its very traditional coffin, no matter how "fresh" it might sound. Those "fresh" sounds are mere sonic fluff; what's underneath is The Same Old Thing or maybe old oil in new bottles.

Thirdly, despite technology and innovation, the pop music palette pales next to that of the good-old fashioned western orchestra. Pop music is very limited harmonically and melodically compared to the vast sonic explorations of everyone from Tallis to Part. Pop music nearly always has to fit some preconceived format, whereas classical invents its own.

I could go on, but have to go myself. I'm not putting any of this as well as my classical-loving friend could, and I remind you that I've argued against nearly every one of these points. Critics, sharpen your nibs!

I guess my basic argument back to your friend is one of economy (multiple senses very consciously meant). If a readily available and fairly popular outlet contains an idea which while familiar to a much smaller group of people/specialists is wholly new to The Public at Large, then the provenance of said idea is rendered generally irrelevant (note I say generally). Said friend might splutter, but the ideas contained in Ives etc. didn't mean jack to most until "Tomorrow Never Knows" showed it could be meshed with a good beat and you could dance to it -- which matches with a claim I made elsewhere yesterday that maybe something isn't really avant-garde until it's matched with a great rhythm and heard worldwide. ;-)

Some v. brief responses to XYZ's friend:

1. Not all pop musicians seek to please the greatest number of people. Sometimes the numbers are even as low as the contemporary classical audience.

2. a. Perhaps, but there's something to be said for doing something a-g and having people like it. b. At least as far as my ignorant ass is concerned, the last big thing in classical music, minimalism, drew on popular music ("Roach was a jazz drummer") and non-western music ("Roach studied Ghanan drumming" etc.) kind of fussily. Less weighty tradition and less frowny listeners = more freedom to aggressively pursue some a-g developments. Classical tradition = hogtied.

3. Harmonically - yes. Melodically - debatable. Rhyhmically - matter of bitter debate (received view of pro-pop music listeners is that pop is far more rhythmically advanced; view of antipop curmudgeons is that pop is rhythmically retarded). Timbrally/texturally - you gotta be kidding me. Form: dunno, awful lot of canonical classical music (not just Bach either, ha) falls pretty well into some standard forms. Only the style-makers stand out (and isn't the same true of pop?).

Distinction between classical-as-repertoire and currently-being-made-classical important, probably.

More important, and back to my old arg. from the Pop vs. Rock thread, pop at least has terms by which to judge its success, while the a-g can only judge success by how many angry listeners it outrages, at best. A-g's true success is perhaps when its ideas cross into the pop world. But if they're done in such a way as to make them accessable, then aren't they being done better?

XYZ: Have you seen the feature in the Wire magazine archives where Stockhausen was played tracks by Aphex Twin and others, and commented, then the same people were played the bits of Stockhausen the master prescribed them (to correct their errors)? It's fascinating, because both sides seem to be missing the strengths of the other. The techno kids are all like 'Why doesn't he just repeat that cool sound with a cool beat for three minutes?' And Stockhausen was like 'What's the point of all this repetition?'

I think the western orchestra is vastly over-rated, especially the way it's usually recorded, all small and smeary and reverby. Eno is good on this, how you just can't notate the things pop does with sound, and how they're often much richer than anything classically trained musicians do.

A couple more thoughts (have to rush): maybe this is a conflict between UK and US ideas about how music should be received. The US is a lot slower paced, and artists get a lot of time to evolve. UK can be mercilessly quick in artist turnover, cruelly dismissive of last year's saviours, and superficially trendy. Also, maybe it's a difference between metropolitan style, with its quick turnover and fidgetty impatience, and a provincial focus of slow, sustainable growth.

Finally, maybe excitement is overrated. Maybe there are other qualities we should be looking for in music. Like, how friendly is it?

Zedd, a few remarks off the top of my head to your classical-loving friend... It could be argued that "serious" composers are much more self-conscious of their Art, and that this self-consciousness can inhibit/constrict/direct their creativity in many ways. Arnold Schoenberg, who was seen at the time as a radical iconoclast (atonalism? serialism? yikes!), actually saw himself as a torch- carrier of the Western Classical Tradition. He saw his developments - the twelve-tone row, etc. - as a natural progression of the form (all of this is old hat to anyone who ever took a music history class, and I apologize). He even made his students study Bach for a YEAR before they could compose anything on their own.

Another thing is the pressure of the academic environment itself (pretty much the only place where so-called "serious" composition takes place nowadays). Schools tend to impress upon their students an ideology or a method (often rigorously enforced) of composition; even at this point in time, there are strongholds of serial composition in certain colleges. If you go there, you compose serial music - period. And there are strongholds of minimalism, musique concrete, etc., as well. The agendas being upheld and enforced at many of the major schools of music are, quite frankly, oppressive and disgusting.

Also, to go back to the Schoenberg issue I brought up earlier, the pressure of tradition is MUCH greater on so-called "serious" composers than on your average non-academic songwriter/musician/whatever. If you think it's bad trying to write songs and realizing you'll never be John Lennon or Kevin Shields (sorry about the obvious names; I'm pretty tired), think about the shadows cast by Beethoven or Mozart. Or John Cage, or Steve Reich, for that matter.

These combined characteristics of "serious" composition - the extreme self-consciousness, the extensive and often restrictive academic training, and the weight and pressure of tradition - probably make a good case for the tendency of "serious" music to be LESS adventurous. There is no such thing as a fuck-all attitude in "serious" composition. Actually, there is, but it's all part of the pose at this point in time - serious composers are SUPPOSED to deconstruct, to push formal boundaries, to be original. Sometimes developments in classical music just feel like a giant grid being filled out, though. "Oh, we haven't done THIS before... let's exhaust all possible outlets..." etc. It feels like an EXERCISE in originality. Which doesn't feel much like originality at all.

Does this make any sense? Sorry I'm rambling; I'll try to be more coherent later.

Successful a-g music creates its own standards.

Josh, I feel the same way; I was more addressing so-called "serious" composition. I think that academia can be a stifling environment when it comes to creating music - I guess that was my main point. Also, you often hear academians and composers claim that the only TRUE avant-garde music comes from "serious" composition/the academy/etc., which to people who tend to contribute to ILM, sounds justifiably like a suspicious load of self-congratulatory drivel.

Pushing a technical boundary is just a hat trick. Creating a deep and lasting emotional resonance, altering a mind, pushing a LISTNER'S boundaries (and not just in the sense of their appreciation of technical tools) is difficult. The hip-hop beat is probably one of the most important musical developments of the past 30 years. I've seen this credited to one of (I believe) Miles Davis' backing musicians, but it certainly was refined by an entire panoply of artists. Which brings another point -- a-g tends to focus on individual genius as opposed to collective innovation in the form of a "scene". Arguably, the most important pop music has always been the result of a scene or subculture, of accumulation of trends, ideas, and influences. These then find EXPRESSION through particularly talented/gifted artists. The task in the pop world is to embody, while the task in the a-g world is to differentiate, to stand apart from the crowd through innovation. Thus people IDENTIFY with pop artists, but who in the world would identify with Part, as incredible as his compositions might be?
Also, given the sonic possibilities open to home studios, why do "serious" composers still work for such traditional instrumentation?

That's what they were taught on. Their orchestration classes didn't cover ProTools and MPC2000s, so they don't use them. Think how big of a deal instrumentation is in Western Classical Music. When you hear about Harry Partch, for example, all you ever hear about is "that wacky dude who made all these crazy instruments," you don't hear as much about the intriguingly insane music he created with them. It's almost funny to go to a recital and see these CRAZY AVANT- GARDE PIECES for, like, cello and piano.

To continue that thought, it seems like one (perhaps unconscious) way that "serious" composers preserve and further the tradition of which they are a part, despite the fact that it may be a little on the trivial side: "See, I'm still 'serious,' I'm still classical - I compose for string quartet and orchestra, I write solo piano pieces - I don't use guitars and synthesizers!" I'm oversimplifying here, but would it really be as much of an issue on what to call Branca's music if it was made for orchestra rather than for guitar ensemble?

Big part of it may also be preference for acoustic instruments. Their being chordal is important, too, for small-group music. Common alternatives: electric guitar and keyboards, which they may loathe the sounds of.

Assuming that 'a-g' is 'revolutionary', i.e. leads TO something - impossible to say what is actually 'ground-breaking' (which is what I personally look for in shovels, not music, but never mind) without distance in (many) years, as things that seem to open up new possibilities are sometimes blind alleys ('intelligent' drum'n'bass, No Wave). When the third VU album came out, did people think, "Wow, in about 15/20 years a bunch of indie bands in Scotland and New Zealand are going to sound quite like this, we better get on the bus now!" 'Course not.

Just because some revolutions died early, doesn't mean they weren't revolutionary.

History is also full of examples of revolutions pegged as such early on. Schoenberg, rock n roll, Coltrane's "anti-jazz", I'm sure you can provide more examples.

Not so much 'died early' as leaving no PROGENY. The garage-rock one- hit wonders of the 60s live on, while years and years of Mayall/Savoy Brown/Alvin Lee noodling were all for nowt.

Ned, Josh, Sterling, Momus, Clarke, tarden: You are all highly commended for adding so much fuel to the fire of the debate with my classical-loving friend. You’ve all said much better and more succinctly what I’ve tried to articulate myself--and added so much more. Since I’m not a musician and can’t think abstractly very well, I rely on people like you to speak up for people like me.

It’s interesting how, as the Stockhausen anecdote shows and all your other examples further illustrate (no ProTools in Music Theory?! Schoenberg--of course!), there’s so little communication between the various musical factions. Sort of like poets vs. novelists or socialists vs. libertarians. This may be why I like those Reich and Henry remix projects so much, since they offer such a fascinating detente. And why I wish Xenakis had written pop music.

The “Dictionary Of The Avant-Garde” I have at home leaves out almost every important pop musician worthy of entry. (Even Brian Eno of all people gets very short shrift.)

When I first began listening to classical albums I was always at least somewhat disappointed that orchestras are always recorded the same way--why not put more reverb on that clarinet or add some kind of flange effect to the strings and then multi- track the tympani? Likewise, I get tired of rock/pop music that doesn’t try to push beyond guitarbassdrums, three chords, and four/four time in new ways (not that you can’t do a lot with the old ways in either case!).

NB Please note that I misspelled Hovhaness and that Debussy might be ground zero for “Tomorrow Never Knows,” not Ives. What is the first true avant-garde pop song that was also a best- seller?

'Summertime Summertime' by the Jamies (1958)

Reponse largely to Momus here: my question wasn't really meant to imply that there's an actual sense of the avant garde in pop or even indie --- just something of the same desire for "newness." In the indie world it manifests itself in MBV-type terms; in pop it manifests itself in Madonna-type terms, where the technical content of the music remains the same but the presentation and the cultural signification shift rapidly. I'm not entirely convinced of the negative effects I posited above, but I do get the sense --- at least among the Chicago indie crowd --- that our attention spans for any given artist are shrinking rapidly. Circa Ping Pong, it seemed like everyone here was a Momus fan; circa The Little Red Songbook, people said, "Momus? Oh, yeah, I remember him. He's okay, I guess." It took all of five minutes for people to start finding it "old," which strikes me as something approaching dilettantism. Or dilettantery, or something.

Mainly I just want to stress that I mean "new" not as "truly avant garde" but just "something else." To pull from another thread, both Oasis and Belle and Sebastian struck people as "new" or "refreshing" or "the next thing," despite both being rather traditionalist bands -- - it's a "new" of small differences.

What if the constant desire for novelty means that pop music and even its more obscure offshoots REALLY ARE lacking in 'substance'?

I absolutely hope and expect that my audience requires something new, avant garde, 'something else', whatever you want to call freshness and change, from me. That's the kind of audience I can deal with, and if they find me lacking in novelty, they have every right to seek it elsewhere. (Of course, I happen to think that the content and worldview in my work are pretty unusual, so people tend to stick around for those too.)

What frustrates me, as an artist, is when my audience says 'Why can't you keep doing what you did on [x or y album]?' The answer is, you can't. As Borges pointed out, if you rewrote Don Quixote word for word today it would be a different book because the context has changed. (Oasis sounded superficially like the Beatles, but missed their creative esssence by several thousand miles.) You have to keep changing to get the same effects. You have to keep moving the goalposts and rewriting the rules. You have to be two steps ahead to be current.

(I note with some bitter amusement that some ex-NME types have decided, almost a year after my Folktronic album (which they didn't review) that the new trend is 'Folktronica'.)

http://www.ammocity.com/ammo/get_article.php?itemid=2159&subid=0& sessid=a30bbca6ee135c2b30bcb417398f4e5a&banner=§ion_name=HOME& bgimage=frontbg&linkcolour=E9DBA8§id=0&feedback=feedback

"Oasis sounded superficially like the Beatles [... well, a BIT...] and missed their creative essence by 1000s of miles". OK. But by your own argument, that needn't mean failure. It would mean that the context was different, so the effect was different. Worse? Maybe. Infinitely worse, and abysmal? Not necessarily. Interesting? Conceivably.

Sorry I haven't been at this thread but I've been busy. However I did get the Ammocity Folktronica story sent to me and I imagined Nick going bonkers, now ten times more so the Enema are involved.

A lack of enthusiasm for 'new' music seems to coincide with an inability to hear anything truly innovative within the music in question (I'm not trying to suggest inferior listening skills; perhaps the music really is indistinguishable from that which came before). See Nitsuh's original references to "trends" and "gimmicks" - all euphemisms for false pretences at innovation, no?

Strikes me as a bit of a chicken and egg situation: is it the unimpressive music that's led to this lack of enthusiasm, or does the lack of enthusiasm render the music automatically less impressive than it might be to a novelty-junkie? Whatever - obviously if one can't perceive genuine innovation in the musical form then it's not the innovation itself which annoys so much as the alleged innovation; the apparently unsubstantiated posturing.

I also find Francesco's suggestion that most current claims to innovation are based around lifestyles to be strangely disconcerting. What are you basing this on, Francesco? Do I have to swill champagne by the bottle to enjoy UK Garage? 'Cos I certainly can't afford to.

It's too late for me to read the whole thread properly (I'm already in my early 40s), so just to point out that the AG doesn't move TOWARDS anything, it moves AWAY.

Pinefox, was Oasis the sound of Now or the sound of New? Or I mean, seems like nostalgia was the primary (reactive) element, rather than progressive. Perhaps they missed the mark by copping all the queues and attitudes of the fab4, so arguabley - were early 77' Jam reactionaries? Are counter-reformationists part of the Cult of the new? Or do they strive to be in the cult of the (seemingly) Sincere?

No, they just rocked. And sometimes that's all you need. :-) *hums "Up in the Sky" to self*

shall i be the one to point out that electronic music was pioneered by modern composers? also, ives and satie are hardly obscure names. as well known, quite probably, as my bloody valentine.

sterling: pop has an edge because sales (or something else?) provide a clearly defined measure of success? the avant-garde has no standards of accomplishment other than pissing people off or pushing technical boundaries? obviously the reason for the canonization of pieces like threnody for the victims of hiroshima or deserts is because they "create a deep and lasting emotional resonance, alter minds, and push listeners' boundaries."

Thus people IDENTIFY with pop artists, but who in the world would identify with Part, as incredible as his compositions might be?

this is a curious question. i will puzzle over it for a while, trying to figure out whether i identify with ll cool j in a way that i don't identify with boulez.

It threw me too. It's worse for instrumental music: would Sterl say the same thing for a Plasticman track and Part's "Cantus"? I don't get what would single out the "serious" composers.

Sorry, being needlessly provocative again. I think the identification factor is quite real. Although, in classical (maybe less so in the a-g) ppl. seem to identify with the CONDUCTOR of the orchestra. On the other hand, the thing about the a-g not creating a deep lasting emotional resonance was a goad. At the same point, I think this is all too often not a primary concern of a-g composers, while market forces compel pop artists to this. Further, pop tends to be better at creating an IMMEDIATE emotional impact with less effort exerted on the part of the listener. The intensity of listening is lessened (indeed, pop listening for me often requires more letting go than focusing attention).

'Who'd identify with classical composers?' That's easy. People who identify with pop stars usually want to emulate the lifestyle package, not the process - what teenage grungester wanted to be Kurt Cobain so much that they bought a left-handed Fender Jaguar and mastered Cheap Trick & Melvins licks? No, for most it was about letting your hair grow link and dyeing it pink, wearing flannel, speaking in that zen Pac-Northwest style and writing abstract poetry about foetii with cancer. Not hard to find more precocious/precious types who want to be Harry Partch, Glenn Gould, Hans Werner Henze, Maria Callas. Ever seen 'Shine'? I'm sure alot of tortured young academy students watch that film repeatedly.

J Duchamp: sorry, I'm not sure I understand your serious-looking question. I think I might be with the Raggett on this one. I am not interested in the sound of the New, or of the Now for that matter (as I explained at the top of the thread). My point was that by his own criteria, Momus's dismissal of Oasis didn't really convince. (That doesn't mean Oasis are good, or bad, or anything.)

See Nabokov on "identifying" or "relating" to art or its creators. Yecch! I don't fancy having to emulate or connect on a personal- history level to an artist to appreciate him or her; neither could I care whether the artwork is "relevant" to my own tortured life or whether I can feel "validated" by its existence. The art has to work on its own terms; I like it because both it and the artist are outside me but inviting me to internalize it. I don't have to have been a White Russian or been around Russian expats to appreciate or understand Nabokov, and I don't want to become Japanese to absorb Yoko Ono. Relevance must come from within the artwork itself and not have to fit accepted or received notions of relevance. OK, lecture over.

I don't want to become Japanese to absorb Yoko Ono either.

now first off, i think this setting up of an opposition between pop and avant-garde composition is a red herring in itself. i do not see the two as oppositional to each other. that said,

On the other hand, the thing about the a-g not creating a deep lasting emotional resonance was a goad. At the same point, I think this is all too often not a primary concern of a-g composers, while market forces compel pop artists to this

sterling, what are you basing this on? readings? conversations with composers or fans of a-g music? impressions garnered from listening? and if the latter, listening to what? i'd really like to know.

obviously, bad avant-garde music might aim only to inflame or to stretch technical boundaries. the primary concern of most composers, afaik, is still to create works that are meaningful emotionally. to say that the primary concern of a-g music is only to stretch technical boundaries is confused. the idea is that by the rejection of established technical conventions, art can be created that, if it does not resonate more immediately, may at least be able to express and move in new ways, to say things that possibly could not be said so easily if conventional forms were preserved -- this is based on the idea that form and content are inseparable.

to say that market forces compel pop musicians to make work of deep lasting emotional resonance is either disingenuous or game-playing. i'm sure we can all list pop records that were fun or useful in a way for a short while that did not make any deep lasting impact on us. deep lasting emotional resonance is not a requirement for chart success -- immediate impact is.

Thanks, pinefox--even as I was writing it, I thought, "This is the most ridiculous sentence I've ever written"!

'to say that market forces compel pop musicians to make work of deep lasting emotional resonance is either disingenuous or game-playing' - perfectly valid game-plan though - find out what triggers your chosen demographic responds to, incorporate them into a song that will sound 'resonant' to said demographic, and not only will chart success follow, but the most succesful of these (the ones with the most triggers) will probably become a 'standard'.

There's a lot of good stuff on this thread. Some random replies:

Momus: Finally, maybe excitement is overrated. Maybe there are other qualities we should be looking for in music. Like, how friendly is it?

Er, how about beauty? Or aesthetic pleasure? I know, I'll forfeit my membership in the Perpetual Ironic Detachment Society (PIDS) for saying that, but shucks, I was never really in to begin with...

This does indeed bring up an interesting point, though. I've often noticed a dichotomy in music, if not all of life's pleasure-seeking activities -- one that, though it's likely going to be denounced as a false dichotomy (and [basically] rightly so), still seems to have value: people who primarily seek a "rush", and people who primarily seek beauty/joy. It's basically a variation on the old power-vs.-love argument (i.e. in the pursuit of which do you spend your life? And which would you choose?), which may in itself be specious, but no matter.

Josh: Harmonically - yes. Melodically - debatable. Rhyhmically - matter of bitter debate (received view of pro-pop music listeners is that pop is far more rhythmically advanced; view of antipop curmudgeons is that pop is rhythmically retarded). Timbrally/texturally - you gotta be kidding me. Form: dunno, awful lot of canonical classical music (not just Bach either, ha) falls pretty well into some standard forms.

While I agree with most of that, the fact that most pop is in 4/4 or 6/8, is tonal (melodically and harmonically), and has no real polyrhythms is pretty strong evidence to me. African drum music has more complicated polyrhythmic structures than the vast majority of pop music. Like you said, I have my doubts.

And as for form, that's not just sonata, blues, etc. It's also the ability of a composer to generate large-scale structures with intelligible relationships between the different sections of the piece. There are ways in which that's powerfully true in certain pop/rock albums, but for the most part, those sorts of relationships are developed very primitively by comparison with, say, Wagner or Debussy, and depend on pure intuition/inspiration (rather than a mixture of intuition and technique).

It's almost funny to go to a recital and see these CRAZY AVANT- GARDE PIECES for, like, cello and piano.

The incongruity only sticks if you subscribe to the flawed, novelty-heavy interpretation of "avant-garde", I think.

Momus again:

I absolutely hope and expect that my audience requires something new, avant garde, 'something else', whatever you want to call freshness and change, from me. That's the kind of audience I can deal with, and if they find me lacking in novelty, they have every right to seek it elsewhere.

Wouldn't you rather that the audience's prerequisite were that your works be _good_? (i.e. aesthetically appealing/rewarding, or somesuch similar) Novelty is cheap and easy, compared to (ahem) Quality. (Paging Robert Pirsig...)

What frustrates me, as an artist, is when my audience says 'Why can't you keep doing what you did on [x or y album]?' The answer is, you can't. <snip> You have to keep changing to get the same effects.

The overemphasis on novelty, though, has steadily accelerated the pace of that change. Thus, as with all polarizing phenomena, moderation (i.e. slow, steady, intelligent growth) has been deprecated, in favor of the extremes of hyper-conservatism and the fetishization (there's that word again!) of novelty.

Sterling: I think the identification factor is quite real. Although, in classical (maybe less so in the a-g) ppl. seem to identify with the CONDUCTOR of the orchestra.

What about the @#$#@ work?! When I first heard Bach or Stravinsky or whomever, I didn't "identify" with them, I just heard beautiful and/or fascinating (etc.) music. Knowing their biographies has had little effect on that initial impression. Not everything need be hung on personalities, no matter how much pop may promote such an emphasis.

Tarden: Not hard to find more precocious/precious types who want to be Harry Partch, Glenn Gould, Hans Werner Henze, Maria Callas. Ever seen 'Shine'? I'm sure a lot of tortured young academy students watch that film repeatedly.

Not in my experience. Almost all of the people I've known who are drawn to classical music come to it because they find something in it that they don't get anywhere else -- not because it's hip, or because they like the image! Maybe the semi-competent or incompetent hangers-on are different, but they exist for everything that can possibly have a "scene", so who cares about them? It's not from them that great things generally come.

Sundar: obviously, bad avant-garde music might aim only to inflame or to stretch technical boundaries. the primary concern of most composers, afaik, is still to create works that are meaningful emotionally. to say that the primary concern of a-g music is only to stretch technical boundaries is confused. the idea is that by the rejection of established technical conventions, art can be created that, if it does not resonate more immediately, may at least be able to express and move in new ways, to say things that possibly could not be said so easily if conventional forms were preserved -- this is based on the idea that form and content are inseparable.

To quote the Jerky Boys, "Yo, bam!" I do agree.

And Pinefox: So - 'Art does not improve'?

Well, how about this -- the notion of "progress" in art is suspect. Monteverdi didn't write the way he wrote because he was ignorant or what-have-you, and we do not represent an improvement over him. The history of music isn't teleological, and there's no goal towards which progress can be said to being made -- unlike in, say, medicine, where the goal is essentially immortality (or as near as we can get, anyway).

Rather, what's happened since M'verdi is a broadening and deepening of the language, and the development of tools with which to articulate musical ideas of growing sophistication. (You can't really write eight-part counterpoint with the notation used for Gregorian chant; you can't write fully chromatic music without some degree of equal temperament, etc.) We're not better than him, we just have more tools, and those tools, if we know how to use them, give us the ability to create things Monteverdi could not -- but while those things are potentially more sophisticated in certain ways, they're not "better".

Phil: I am impressed once again by your acuity and vast knowledge bank.

I don't understand the musicological terms you use, unfortunately, having (mistakenly?) given up on that stuff in 1989. I daresay that music did get more complex - whether it's STILL getting complex seems a bit moot (but I'll take your word for it if need be). Just to clarify: I was certainly NOT saying that art DID improve. It's a commonplace (isn't it?) to say that it doesn't, and I was not veering from that commonplace. (PS: was it Eliot who actually said it? Where?) (I don't know enough about the history of most arts to have an 'empirical' clue about this, anyway.)

Maybe art DOES improve and the AUDIENCES just get worse and worse.

Phil complains about constant "Search for new" in pop, but notes that a-g boundary pushing, in acc. with sundar, finds deep emotional resonance b/c form is inseperable from content. Sigh. Anyway, Bach's inventions = pop!

Also, for one to find resonance with a-g, one must often be invested heavily in the discourse of the music, and in the history of the music b/c often the impact comes from relative aspects = i.e. challenging an axis which certain others have trad. held to be fixed. Pop, meanwhile, requires much less engagement with anything but the social structures already apparent in most contempo society. In that sense pop presents a MORE mediated reflection of any individual, but a LESS mediated reflection of large forces in society as a whole.

I totally disagree, Sterling. Plenty of people get into a-g jazz by starting there, or a-g classical by starting there, then going backward. I can pick up a Schoenberg record or a Penderecki record and have the music resonate with me; sure, I may get a more resonant experience if I have more context, but the same is true of pop music, and I think it's a lot more complicated than just saying junk about social forces to establish that pop listeners get more context, or more immediate context, or whatever.

"When I first heard Bach or Stravinsky or whomever, I didn't "identify" with them, I just heard beautiful and/or fascinating (etc.) music." Actually it was the insistence on this (as I then felt) extremely limiting and dehumanised emotional and intellectual mode of engagement within "classical" music that drove me out of it, I think: esp. when coupled with the idea that the narrowness was a kind of breadth. Classical musicians of my acquaintance at the time were (with a small few exceptions) SUCH FUCKING EMOTIONAL BONEHEDZ.

Internal connectedness of Wagner's forms and structures: so what? One of many kinds of manipulative bullying on his part, to get him electing TOP COMPOSER OF ALL TIME. It matters to him cuz he was good at it. Structure is a device for producing problems: it's not the only one.

Pop is less dense rhythmically than (some) African Drum Orc stuff: but less subtle/ complex etc etc? How d'you measure this? Stave-music can't even map how someone plays in front of or behind the beat, let alone how sound in three-space (virutal or real) locks into its own nexus of delay (sound takes time to travel: syncopation and clavé — latin rhythm is all over pop, esp pop which is for some reason dismissed as trivial — are a way of micro-melodramatising this sense of 3-D-ness). 4/4 is a left-over analytic grid from a music which got trapped inside the very grid: it misses out virtually everything that's going on in pop, that matters in pop (quite apart from the Grate Drama of the love-war between the performer and the audience). Orchestral music up until varese is MUCH MORE BORING AND CLUMSY RHYTHMICALLY as a while than the top ten this weekend as I speak: which because digital operates at a micro-variation level anyway. Pop uses readymades: harmony, rhythm patterns, song-types. The lack of formal variation at THAT point shunts the area of transformation and meaning-carriage over onto other stuff: like whether Billie Piper dances "wittily" compared to Britney. Which in my senescence I have been known to claim....

as a while = as a whole

Phil: I'm not thinking about polyrhythms, I'm thinking about just a greater rhythmic... oomph. Flexibility. Sensuousness.

Isn't most classical music tonal as well?

I have a suspicion that large-scale form just ain't all that. Anyway, the point was to respond to Zedd's friend's point about the greater range of material available to classical music - "pop music nearly always has to fit some preconceived format, whereas classical invents its own." I have a good idea of what you mean by "form" even though I know that to try to lay out out would result in some complications. But I still want to say that my point holds - most classical music falls into certain well-established forms. It may offer variations on those forms, but Zedd's friend was making a point re pop-song-format vs. art-music-format, and all I can guess is that he meant something like "AABA" or something pat like that, which lines up pretty well with sonata form, etc., in classical music. The edge that classical gets in this area due to the more strictly enforced internal forms (oh look this is an inversion of this thing from the first movement, yadaa yadda yadda) isn't competing with the same thing in pop music, though - I think it's a very big error to hold the two up like that, expecting to say one is better than the other at something like form. (So I should go take back the other stuff I said in comparing them.) A lot of the formal manipulations that allow art music composers to work within the standard forms (and to push those forms) are paralleled by stylistic and other devices in pop. Even though you can have some sucess in applying the theoretical tools of western art music to pop music, I think it's not so direct as what we've got going on here. (And I don't think Sterl's totally wrong re the social angle, I mean, look at a book like Berliner's jazz improv study - but he's just pushing it too much too fast.)

Heh, yeah, what Mark said.

Also important to consider how much the classical canon is trimmed down due to time. Barely anyone ever listens to the knockoff contemporaries of Mozart and Haydn who did like them but not as grate. I think this can make any talk of e.g. pop working within standard forms, conventions, etc. much more difficult because of course we also have to deal with the fact that there are 4 million pop punk bands, or 4 million R+B divas singing over post-Timbaland stutter-beats, or whatever. If not for that talk of pop music's standardization would carry a lot less weight, I think (it would force it to strengthen a more music-theoretical argument).

Sterling: Emotional resonance as a consequence of intellectual (or perhaps emotional) understanding of what the a-g is moving away from/towards? Does this imply that while the a-g may create formal tools that will be used by future composers in creating emotionally- comprehensible music, at the time of their creation, these tools are without the ability to be immediately emotionally resonant to those unfamiliar with the dialogue surrounding the music? Will pop’s audience always react with emotional alienation when presented with a- g ideas? Also, “a-g tends to focus on individual genius as opposed to collective innovation in the form of a "scene" ”: that’s true concerning how the a=g imagines itself but at the moment I’m reading an article on the a-g in late 19th Century art that insists that the “hallowed individual” perception of the a-g is actually a fallacy, and that the process of an artist establishing himself in the a-g canon required very much his understanding of his “scene” and his position therein and knowing exactly how to manipulate and elevate his status within that collective, knowing that ultimately the individual genius would usurp the spotlight from the last one.

Going in order:

Pinefox: thanks! I think I understand where you were/are coming from.

Sterling:

Phil complains about constant "Search for new" in pop, but notes that a-g boundary pushing, in acc. with sundar, finds deep emotional resonance b/c form is inseperable from content.

Actually, the form-inseparable-from-content is the one part I should've omitted -- as I'm not entirely sure what that means! Obviously, I understand the literal meaning, but I'm having a hard time transliterating it, if you will. In any event, when "avant-garde" music has emotional resonance (or aesthetic appeal/power), I wouldn't think it's because of that, but rather for the same (non-social) reasons that music of any kind has emotional resonance.

Bach's inventions = pop!

Whaaaat? Where's the argumentation to support this one?

Also, for one to find resonance with a-g, one must often be invested heavily in the discourse of the music, and in the history of the music b/c often the impact comes from relative aspects = i.e. challenging an axis which certain others have trad. held to be fixed.

Can't it just be a beautiful piece of music? Plenty of pieces once considered "avant-garde" have now become staples of the repetoire, and the affect (yes, I spelled that correctly) they inspire owes more, I think, to their intrinsic qualities than to any long-forgotten boundary-pushing (relative to other works of the period, that is, or to the musical mores of the time).

Mark S:

Actually it was the insistence on this (as I then felt) extremely limiting and dehumanised emotional and intellectual mode of engagement within "classical" music that drove me out of it, I think: esp. when coupled with the idea that the narrowness was a kind of breadth. Classical musicians of my acquaintance at the time were (with a small few exceptions) SUCH FUCKING EMOTIONAL BONEHEDZ.

Such a sweeping and gross generalization demands, I think, a bit more argumentation than what you've supplied. How is it an "extremely limiting and dehumanised emotional and intellectual mode of engagement" to love the music without needing the biographical details of the composer? The man (or woman) is not the work, nor vice versa.

Internal connectedness of Wagner's forms and structures: so what? + It matters to him cuz he was good at it.

To the people that love his music, his formal ability is what gives his operas their cohesiveness and majesty. (Those aren't really the adjectives I wanted, but YKWIM.) Furthermore, the formal techniques he developed are still very much in use today; he has forever enriched the formal vocabulary of all contemporary composers -- and not just classical ones.

One of many kinds of manipulative bullying on his part, to get him electing TOP COMPOSER OF ALL TIME.

Dare I ask for some documentation on this unsubstantiated allegation? It's a bizarre statement indeed, and you're in danger of sounding like one of those Stalinist polemics from the thirties/forties -- lots of ad hominem attacks and bombastic rhetoric. I'm not saying Wagner was a saint -- but what I am saying is that his moral character is largely irrelevant to the discussion we're having, and besides, you haven't put forth any coherent reason to characterize his contributions to musical technique as "malevolent bullying".

Stave-music can't even map how someone plays in front of or behind the beat, let alone how sound in three-space (virutal or real) locks into its own nexus of delay (sound takes time to travel: syncopation and clavé — latin rhythm is all over pop, esp pop which is for some reason dismissed as trivial — are a way of micro-melodramatising this sense of 3-D-ness). 4/4 is a left-over analytic grid from a music which got trapped inside the very grid: it misses out virtually everything that's going on in pop, that matters in pop (quite apart from the Grate Drama of the love-war between the performer and the audience). Orchestral music up until varese is MUCH MORE BORING AND CLUMSY RHYTHMICALLY as a while than the top ten this weekend as I speak: which because digital operates at a micro-variation level anyway. Pop uses readymades: harmony, rhythm patterns, song-types.

Sorry, but your argument is exceedingly muddled here. The first problem is that you're mxiing up your time periods; at one point you essentially define classical music as "everything up to Varese" for your purposes, but then you say that "pop uses readymades", implying that classical music doesn't. You're deliberately ignoring the part of classical music (Elliott Carter, Varèse, Stravinsky) that contradicts you on rhythmic complexity, and then ignoring the part (Mozart, Handel, Vivaldi) that contradicts you on readymades. (How can pop structure be more readymade than sonata form, or German lied, if "readymades" are "harmony, rhythm patterns, song-types"?)

All of the things you advance above are things that classical music has been dealing with for centuries.

Stave-music can't even map how someone plays in front of or behind the beat

You seem to be laboring under the mistaken impression that classical musicians play like metronomes -- perhaps because you're conflating classical music with orchestral music, which has a slightly stronger tendency towards rhythmic steadiness, owing to the requirements of performance. In any event, one is a superset of the other. Just for starters, isten to a Chopin nocturne or Beethoven's Appassionata sonata; notice the numerous changes in tempo that are, or aren't, on the page.

let alone how sound in three-space (virutal or real) locks into its own nexus of delay (sound takes time to travel

Have you never been in a large church and heard a full-size organ? Or been in a huge concert hall and seen a performance by a large ensemble? There's an entire nuanced vocabulary of rhythmic alterations and shadings that classical musicians use to compensate for acoustic delay. It's been a known problem for, oh, about a thousand years now. And I won't even touch the intricate methods of seating, positioning, playing styles, and so forth -- methods that have been developed over hundreds of years. In concert, classical music is, or can be, 3-D. cf. Debussy's La Mer, Wagner's Das Rheingold, Elliott Carter's Double Concerto for Harpsichord and Piano, and more pieces than I can name.

Orchestral music up until varese is MUCH MORE BORING AND CLUMSY RHYTHMICALLY as a while than the top ten this weekend as I speak: which because digital operates at a micro-variation level anyway.

I can't parse this sentence -- the second half, anyway. The first half is highly, highly debatable at best -- and certainly, again, missing the argumentation that would be needed for a reasoned discussion of such things.

Josh:

Phil: I'm not thinking about polyrhythms, I'm thinking about just a greater rhythmic... oomph. Flexibility. Sensuousness.

Pop music (and rock, jazz, etc.) definitely has a vocabulary of rhythmic nuances and shadings that are, well, oomphy and sensuous and whatever else. I think it's a big part of what people who love both classical music and pop music look for in pop -- it's one of the big things that pop and jazz have to bring to the table, in part I think owing to the African and African-American heritage which they share. (African music indubitably has a rhythmic palette that is just plain MISSING from earlier Western music. Certainly many composers were thunderstruck upon hearing early jazz, and it wasn't just the "other" they were responding to, but also the incredible aesthetic power and nuance of its rhythmic language.

Isn't most classical music tonal as well?

We have to define our terms -- do we mean to stop at Schoenberg, or go further? And do we want to include people like John Williams and Hans Zimmer who make their living by ripping off -- ahem, I mean "evoking" dead tonal composers? (I've heard that Williams' own music, by the way, is atonal, rugged, and pretty good.) To my mind, if we're going to define classical music as 1550-1900, and deny everything that's happened since, then we ought to do something similar with our definition of pop. (Something like 1890-1967 ought to do it.) Anyway, when I say classical music, I'm including works composed up to the present day.

I have a suspicion that large-scale form just ain't all that.

Depends, I'd think, on the piece in question.

But I still want to say that my point holds - most classical music falls into certain well-established forms. It may offer variations on those forms, but Zedd's friend was making a point re pop-song-format vs. art-music-format, and all I can guess is that he meant something like "AABA" or something pat like that, which lines up pretty well with sonata form, etc., in classical music.

If we're permitting works from the modern era, then I must respectfully disagree. What is the well-established form of an Elliott Carter piece? Or Boulez, or Babbitt, or Stravinsky, or Debussy, or Feldman? For every piece you'll find by one of these composers that uses sonata form, you'll probably find two that don't use any known form -- certainly not openly. And when they did invoke older forms, they often distorted them to the point of unrecognizability.

The Second Viennese School (Schoenberg, Berg, Webern) may've kept using the old forms, but they were largely exceptions, and their use of said forms certainly was seldom if ever audible. Wozzeck made heavy use of old forms like theme and variations or rondo form, but given the atonal language of the opera, they don't have the same effect, and are certainly not felt by the average listener. Sonata form isn't really the same without functional dominant-tonic progressions. As a teacher of mine said, "Writing an atonal canon is no great shakes" -- because the form no longer has any harmonic tension, and that's what makes a canon interesting -- the fact that a musical line can work with a time-delayed version of itself, and create a third thing. In a way, a canon is the ultimate example of using one motive to generate an entire piece (which is arguably one of the ideals of certain traditions of composition, especially the Germanic one); there are Renaissance motets that are composed entirely of a single line, transposed and time-shifted, but you'd never know it without analyzing the piece.

Even though you can have some sucess in applying the theoretical tools of western art music to pop music, I think it's not so direct as what we've got going on here.

I can agree with that. Certainly, pop music has a merit which is not wholly articulable in the historical language of Western art music criticism.

(And I don't think Sterl's totally wrong re the social angle, I mean, look at a book like Berliner's jazz improv study - but he's just pushing it too much too fast.)

I agree, though I don't know Berliner's book. I certainly think that considerations outside of the piece itself inform our approach to a piece of music. We ourselves are neither ahistorical nor non-social beings; and the music to which human beings listen to will generally include an implicit assumption of shared signs and signifiers.

But I still firmly hold that the work exists as a discrete entity, and that its content has primacy over all other social and subjective considerations, important and powerful though those other considerations may be. The alternative, as far as I can see, is a solipsistic morass in which no worthwhile criticism (or communication, really) is possible.

(Can someone modify my paragraph above to make room for works' connections to other works -- like allusions to Dante in T.S. Eliot's poetry and so forth? Or does it need modifying?)

you haven't put forth any coherent reason to characterize his contributions to musical technique as "malevolent bullying".

Sic -- "manipulative bullying", rather. My mistake.

I don't want to deny art music post-1900, Phil. But I guess I'm shifting between thinking about the emphasis-on-the-new that art music has, just at its forefront, as a dynamic thing, and that same emphasis, when you consider art music as a vast body of compositions, practices, performances, social institutions, etc. Sure, Varese might be more rhythmically 'new' than Mozart. But what about the fact that there are way more people listening to Mozart, still? In a lot of other areas, innovation seeps into the wider area fairly regularly. The fact that it hasn't in art music (in the second sense from before, not the first one) indicates to me that something's different about it. This is related to my question about tonal music - its history pre-1900 is a lot bigger, time-wise, and current-place-in-the-art-music-world-wise, than all of 1900-2001. (I suppose I should say, in case you say how much advanced past that the composers and performers are, that we also have to take into account the listeners.)

I must admit though your last paragraph seems laudable I don't really know what that would mean. I wonder if it's not just a fiction that you can assess a work based on its "content" which is somehow set apart from the work's place in history, social considerations, subjective considerations, etc. And I really don't get how it would apply to pop music where you don't have the benefit of such a massively formalized theoretical vocabulary. The bit about "solipsistic morass" is just dumb. There's no need to call forth a charge of solipsism as the sole alternative to an objective-content approach to criticism. Lots and lots of the people here thinking about music are constantly trying to work out what lies in between (and totally outside of) those two poles, with plenty of success, I think.

Is this the cleverest ever thread on ILM?

Sorry Phil: my answer not really meant to be as aggressive as it maybe reads. The BONEHEDZ bit esp.is to do with my extreme unhappiness and sense of stiflement as a v.jr classical orchestral musician when young long ago: thus documentation = my experience at that time. Which is not now, obviously. And not directed at you.

Wagner: don't really care if he was a good or a bad man, this is not my point at all. The form of his operas is intimately related to the technicity of his operas — inc. eg requirement they be played at Bayreuth — is intimately related to the performability (as a business proposition) of his operas is intimately related to his commitment to his role as The Composer of the Future writing the Music-Drama of the Future. Source: his own writing on himself, usually. I didn't say "malevolent", which I don't think; I said "manipulative", which he was (source, er, well, look at the effect his rhetoric had on young europe for decades after his death: poets, novelists, poss. more foax outside music than in). I think he was the most brilliant composer-as-huckster of the 19th century; I think Stravinsky was the most brilliant composer-as-huckster of the 20th (as to taste, I far prefer Stravinsky, but that's really largely because I don't particularly like the modern opera singers sing, and you kinda can't get away from opera singers when you try out Wagner). If you take the person out of the piece then that's dehumanising (if you enjoy that, it's cool): I don't mean, oh, know his biography and only then can you interpret properly. I mean, some — sometimes a lot — of the meaning of a work is the problems it was solving: and by no means all of these problems were harmonic. (Or even compositional, necessarily...) Totality of structure as a superior level of music = a Wagner type argt, ebcause it was a way for him to place HIMSELF were he believed he ought to be. Totality of structure as a thing you or his performers today enjoy is cool: it's what gets you there, it's what gets you juice, its audible realisation will be part of the specific address of the performance. But it's not because it's a superior kind of music than gabba: cuz it ain't.

All these problems that have been utterly understood for millions of centuries till I came along: look, I know about antiphonal choirs (I've sung in em) and organ sound delay in cathedrals (I've played on 'em: to I was useless, cuz I could never factor in the pedals), but if there's a tradition of discussion of these matters in music theory — as opposed to a series practical ad hoc solutions in particular places or bands - then I was not in the late 70s able in any way to discover or access it. The conductors I worked under (no remotely stellar names) didn't understand the questions; the theory papers I took simply ignored the issue (music theory as taught — then, 25 years ago — was very extremely devoid of even imagining that technics had more than a trivial last-minute bearing on the ESSENCE OF MUSIC, as far as I could see and get anyone much to say). I devoured books like Grove — hey, I love music, to coin a phrase — but what you say was always there in the discussion wasn't always there in the discussion. If it was somewhere else, no one was pointing to it. The very fact that there isn't a proper language for what we're trying to talking about is what I'm talking about. I stopped going to orchestral concerts because I couldn't bear what I heard as sluggish sludgy indifference to this particular question (which the works — Stravinsky c.1912-1926 apart – are not ABOUT): where is the beat, and where should the horns be in the relation to the beat, and (which mattered to me as this was what I played) where should the double bass be in relation to the beat? Yeah, small groups — quartets — have it down: they're often rhythmically extremely dynamic (this comes under ad hoc, in a way, but not a fair way: the identity of a string quartet is often deeply involved in how they tacle this rhythm issue). Piano solo it doesn;t arise: rubato vs metronome isn't the issue here at all. American orchestras that I heard then on record sometimes had it, somewhat: a kind of bright dryness. But of course American musicians grew up drenched in post-Sousa, post-ragtime syncopation, which is a device invented to make up for the problem of drag inherent in the much increased size of "classical" orchestras after, what, 1850, 1860?

Readymades: I didn't mean "classical" music doesn't use em, because of course it does: though it gets let off the hook for using, where pop gets slammed. And Carter and Boulez and those bods use em too, though not the same kinds Mozart and Haydn use, not runs of notes and cadences and chord progressions).

Stalinism: yes, hum. Translation; Pop can talked about in dismissive, cheerful, knockabout hilarity (inc. not requiring "documentation" and "argumentation"). Composed art music is so unrobust that has always to come wrapped in this draggy Higher Art, no real-world-constraints- relevant nimbus. But it isn't unrobust: and I hate the way it gets this special protective treatment. Wagner was a person, his musicians and singers were people, his audience were people: music is an interraction of people. Making records and listening to records is an interaction of people. I know you know this cuz you said it on another thread. But "just the work" can be a way of occluding this. It usually is. Writers on this kinda music who = exceptions to such problems = Charles Rosen; Glenn Gould; Adorno (with reservations); Carl Dahlhaus (with reservations). TWA and CD don't "get" the thing I'm saying about rhythm: iue never discuss it.

Improvisation and dance-effective rhythm laying were not prized and not readily to be found in orchestral music from the 1850s onwards. The (amazing) compositional skills that Johann Strauss broght to waltz-playing and Sousa brought to marchbands — where I think technical solutions of the kinds we're talking about did emerge, though they weren't notated or [stupid word alert] theorised — didn't enter into anything like the same sphere of discourse as (say) Schoenberg's or Webern's innovations in harmony. Stravinsky's or Varese's or Stockhausen's innovations in rhythm in composition are entirely disconnected from this kind of technically precise material practice: I'm pretty certain the first two of these three were aware of such problems (Varese at one time pushed to get ionisation performed by jazz percussionists, because he didn't feel routine orchestral percussion performers knew what he wanted); Stockhausen's a special case in OH SO MANY WAYS: his groundbreaking 1957 essay ...how time passes... being a weird and not v.attractive mixture of incredible compositional innovation, tenth-rate mathematics, perceptiveness, confusion and terrible writing...

This is not a great medium for organised argument – I can't read any of your posts as I'm writing this, and I have no printer – and I'm tired, and I don't want to let the wrong things get me riled. I know you're wrong because I know that something BIG changed in music when Louis Armstrong appeared, which is related to micro-rhythmic thinking and play – as made easier by the emergence of recording –which was not previously there as an element in compositional thought. Yes, of course groups down the ages played with excellent urgent rhythmic vividness, and yes, much of this presumably also arose from the micro-rhythmic aspect of ensemble play (tho of course it's very hard to go back and check: no recordings at all before 1876; pitifully few before 1899...). I think the rise of western notation — becaue it ignores this — pushed it down to a subaltern level of importance. We know that notation (and music professionalisation, which is related) drove improvisation into a few niches (organ playing oddly enough being one of them). Did the emergence of the modern piano, the modern conductor and large orchestra (evolving from 1850, let's say, stabilising, the 1880s? When concert-pitch A was first standardised, for example, as a good mark in time) actually actively sideline a kind of rhythmic attentiveness that ordinary small dancebands routinely worked to? I think that they did. And one of the MAJOR MAJOR MAJOR reasons I think this, is that this apsect of play did not become the material for any composed significant works: was not the problem that required solution.

I don't want to deny art music post-1900, Phil.

I didn't think you did. :-)

Sure, Varese might be more rhythmically 'new' than Mozart. But what about the fact that there are way more people listening to Mozart, still?

Well, sure. But if we're going to use Mozart as our point of departure, then we have to use similar figures in pop music -- in other words, it would be unfair to put Mozart up against (for instance) Hrvatski or Of Montreal, or even Autechre. A more fair analogue to Mozart (who is arguably a fairly "evolutionary" figure in many ways, rather than "revolutionary", in that he's considered more the apothoesis of "his movement" than the beginning of a new one) might be...hmmmm...I need someone prolific, wildly famous, and facile and appealing, but not associated with introducing anything tremendously new...maybe the Rolling Stones?

In a lot of other areas, innovation seeps into the wider area fairly regularly. The fact that it hasn't in art music (in the second sense from before, not the first one) indicates to me that something's different about it.

I'm a bit confused by this. Are you saying that the Western art music to which people listen hasn't been subject to innovation in the same way that pop music has? I don't think you can make meaningful critical evaluations of a form of music (or its innovativeness) based on the conservatism of its mainstream audience, who make a point of listening to only a "greatest hits" subset of it from a certain period of time. Again, if we're going to do that, we have to do it with pop music too (so we'd be invoking the Beatles, sure, but also Fleetwood Mac, the Eagles, etc.). But I don't think I'm understanding what you mean about the two senses.

This is related to my question about tonal music - its history pre-1900 is a lot bigger, time-wise, and current-place-in-the-art-music-world-wise, than all of 1900-2001.

Okay. So -- and I'm not being flip here -- what's your point, exactly?

I must admit though your last paragraph seems laudable I don't really know what that would mean. I wonder if it's not just a fiction that you can assess a work based on its "content" which is somehow set apart from the work's place in history, social considerations, subjective considerations, etc. And I really don't get how it would apply to pop music where you don't have the benefit of such a massively formalized theoretical vocabulary. The bit about "solipsistic morass" is just dumb. There's no need to call forth a charge of solipsism as the sole alternative to an objective-content approach to criticism. Lots and lots of the people here thinking about music are constantly trying to work out what lies in between (and totally outside of) those two poles, with plenty of success, I think.

I think you're misunderstanding what I mean. I'm not advocating a form of criticism that would exclude these extramusical things, but merely saying that, as our point of departure, we have to recognize that the work exists as a bounded entity with specific content, and that that content precludes, or fails to establish grounds for, certain conclusions and critical interpretations. I wrote something about this on my page, when I said --

"Maybe I seem like I'm overstating my case, but I do get driven up a wall by people who fail to recognize the primacy and objective existence of the work itself, when discussing a work -- which is a line of reasoning that, if followed to the point of absurdity, ends with statements like one I found a while ago in a book on academic freedom (I think edited by Hofstader), where a student, upon being challenged on his wildly incorrect beliefs about the Inferno or somesuch, responded with something like "Well, this is my Dante, and you can't devalue my Dante, because there's just as much truth in my Dante as yours." Which is total nonsense, of course, but it's shocking to see how many people seem to have bought into that over the years. There is no correct or truthful way by which the Inferno can be made to be about (for instance) Joan Rivers' left toe, and there's no merit to the interpretation of Beethoven's Third (I think) by one overzealous feminist scholar as "an attempted rape".

If we accept that any work can be interpreted to mean anything -- which I think is the inevitable conclusion of any critical method that doesn't postulate the discrete existence of the work -- then we're essentially denying the possibility of meaning, of meaningful content, and thus of meaningful comparative criticism. I don't believe that, and I don't think you do either; that's all I was saying.

I certainly wasn't insisting on a purely objectivist approach to criticism, with no regard to extramusical considerations -- that'd be silly, as history, context and all of those things have tremendous value (it sounds almost truistic to say that, like saying "Gosh, water is good"). Rather, I was saying that all criticism must be grounded in the objective existence of the work, which is a very different thing. So when I said that the alternative to that grounding was "a solipsistic morass in which no worthwhile criticism (or communication, really) is possible", I wasn't referring to extant criticism as being not worthwhile, but was rather saying that if we believe that anything can mean anything, then criticism becomes meaningless, and an endeavor preoccupied not with the work, but with the critic's self.

Does that make more sense now?

Of course not Pinefox. Have you forgotten the INSANE CLOWN POSSE!!

Oboy. One day I will have time to read in their entirety the things on this thread that I have not myself posted. I think (judging by what I just peeked at in that very bottom para so far, abt "discrete" something or other) that Phil is coming from a position SO UTTERLY FAR AWAY from mine that I'd better retire and read when alert and calm and nice.

Really? That's surprising to me, as I found myself agreeing with, or at least open to, nearly everything in your most recent post. When you get some rest, I'm interested in reading what set you off, and whether it still holds after a good night's sleep (and the chance to read my post in full).

Well, I shd warn you, then, Phil, I'm on a promise on abt 20 threads now that soon and inevitably I shall return with PROOF OF MY GENIUS, I mean, er, that I think [x]'s argt is somewhat in error... And the days grow long, and the eager waiting turns to sullen contempt, for yea I hav a Big Ole Gob but the attention span of a hamster. King Swivelhead: as all present will attest!!

I think we should take this talk of objectivity/etc. elsewhere, Phil, so as to let the other stuff in the thread keep going (if it shall).

Classical music = created to please CLASSICAL audiences, which in this day/age oft. = ACADEMIC audiences. At the same point, it IS true that, as josh notes, ppl. can get into free jazz, et cet. from any standpoint. This is because not ALL a-g music created for a-g audiences. Some composers certainly are seeking to find direct emotional expression. Further, in free jazz, the language of emotional "authenticity" often predominates -- which is to say that free jazz is seen not as a matter of complexity but opening up music to find MORE IMMEDIATE resonance. Hence free jazz != a-g classical.

In general, my problem is less with a-g music as a whole (in fact, I quite like the minimalists, part, partch, goreki, crumb, and the usual suspects [Feldman's music is one of the most influential things on my taste]-- in fact, MOST of the music, now that I think about it) than the terms on which it is approached. So, hitting back, I prolly go to far at times. But I guess I end up resorting to a sort of newfound laziness = why bother going through all the trouble of the a- g, when the radio can deliver more with less work.

Don't tell me about pretty music -- tell me what it makes you FEEL. Tell me what it MEANS to you. Tell me HOW composer [x] uses devices [y] and [z] to change your world.

By the way, here is the thread Sterl started for Phil and I and everyone else to ramble on about everybody's favorite, objectivity/subjectivity.

Re Wagner's 'manipulative bullying' - I would argue that somebody's behaviour in the social sphere IS significant as critical factors in the rise to prominence of one composer over another include composer's self-promotion skills, and 'setting up musical problems to be solved' is useful is self-mystification is going to give you that extra advantage in competing for the attention of public or patrons. Therefore, ANY member of the 'canon' or 'pantheon' or whatever is automatically suspect.

No, I don't remember the Insane Clown Posse. Who are they?

Sheesh! I go away for day and come back to find you people have written a frigging book! Maybe I'll have to read it all some day when I'm old.

Actually, I've read most of it now and want to add one little rider to Josh's opine about Mozart's popularity: Isn't this just as much because concert-givers are too afraid to present the concert- goers with much of anything new? I've already gone on record about Gunther Schuller's defense of the new in a seminar I attended last month; naturally, he's one to have much at stake, and it doesn't seem he's too happy, even in 2001. We're told audiences love Mozart more than Varese (hardly "new"!) and consqeuently Mozart is booked more often than Varese. And so people hear less Varese and don't ask for more, not because they necessarily dislike it, but because it's still too unfamiliar. And, after all, Mozart is so warm and cuddly and all and a lot sexier than Varese in more ways than one. So there's an unlimited supply but a limited demand and everyone's afraid to mix it up too much. It's a vicious circle, and I'm hardly the first to point it out. But it is very, very sad.

Plenty of people get into a-g jazz by starting there, or a-g classical by starting there, then going backward.

yeah, like me. i said more on the coltrane thread.

i thought about it. identification with music = emotional resonance with music for me. i identify as much with boulez or ligeti as i do with ll cool j or war horse. also, the reason i identify with pop artists is not because they represent a subculture i feel part of.

Don't tell me about pretty music -- tell me what it makes you FEEL. Tell me what it MEANS to you. Tell me HOW composer [x] uses devices [y] and [z] to change your world

i'm pretty sure i've done enough of this on ilm and will continue to do so.

i still want to know what your comments on free jazz and modern classical are based on.

I rather like those old answers of mine.

Shizzle my nizzle.