4 ms·

Nahre Sol recently put out a video on contemporary classical music [1] that, while attempting to correct common misconceptions and generally promote it, basical

Nahre Sol recently put out a video on contemporary classical music [1] that, while attempting to correct common misconceptions and generally promote it, basically reaffirmed my dislike of the genre. The music really speaks for itself, I don’t see myself ever wanting to listen to this type of music, and no essay or other rationalization is going to change the way that I feel when I hear it. And while I don’t begrudge the individual composers and performers who do make this sort of music - they are of course free to follow their own curiosity and passions - it does upset me a bit that this where “classical” music has ended up. It feels like the academics have hijacked the genre to the detriment of casual listeners. [1] https://youtu.be/cYEke4EsJYM https://youtu.be/cYEke4EsJYM

squidsoup 3y ago
If you consider Cage, Stockhausen and Glass part of the western classical music tradition, then I think we should consider composers like Nils Frahm, Ólafur Arnalds, Richard Skelton and Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith part of that continuum. There are people making interesting, innovative music that isn't academic or needlessly avant garde, that I think can appeal to everyone.
- gnulinux 3y ago
  > needlessly avant garde I'm sorry to say this but there is no such thing as "needlessly avant garde" in Western classical music tradition imho. WCM is about an artist finding his own sound, finding a unique musical language that puts them in the continuum all the way from Bach to him. If your music is not avant garde, it may be great music, but it's not going to be good WCM music. This is just my humble opinion. I almost exclusively listen to contemporary WCM these days, and the way I engage with WCM is different than the way I engage with other genres of music. Put it as film analogy, the goal is not to make the best horror movie, the best drama, the best scifi; the goal is to make the most creative/innovative/novel/personal/weird movie that happens to be horror, that happens to be drama, that happens to be scifi. At least that's how I enjoy WCM. Everybody experiences music differently, which is what makes it one of the most beautiful human phenomena. So in short, the more avant garde the better. Note that Schoenberg's music is already grandpa's grandpa music. We want innovation that goes well well beyond Schoenberg. I would consider 12 tone row music ancient at this point, not even remotely avant garde/experimental.
  - zozbot234 3y ago
    I find it really weird when people just run with this misconception that western literate music somehow started with Bach, as if what people were playing before was something different and not really music. One can clearly hear continuity between late Renaissance and early Baroque style (17th c.) and even how the secular music of the later Middle Ages (the sources of which are sadly a bit too obscure, hence why it's not often performed even as 'early' music) was carried over into the early Renaissance. Bach's style was highly individual, blending highly developed structures and forms of earlier Renaissance music with the fully developed tonality of the later Baroque and the earliest elements of 18th c. ("galant, classical") style.
    - gnulinux 3y ago
      It was just a shorthand. Of course everybody knows it didn't start with Bach, duh. He is a very central figure though, and any work you'll put into an artistic tradition will inevitably be compared to the greats of the tradition.
  - squidsoup 3y ago
    Most listeners are more interested in music conveying emotion, than novelty. If novelty is all WCM has to offer, it is not surprising that it has a dwindling audience.
Hunpeter 3y ago
There is definitely a lot wrong with the classical music scene in general (speaking as a classical pianist - in training). Most notably elitism/classism. I guess classical music also has lots of image problems and just has trouble finding its place in the world. Between the fact that in the last 200 years we've started to actually play and listen to older music (not to mention composing in older styles), the advent of sound recording and then the information age or whatever, it's understandable, really. I myself just feel lucky that I can enjoy most of this "challenging" music without needing to care about the magnificently strict structure, or how the composer wanted to channel God or something. All I ask is that people not question my sanity on the grounds of my liking of this kind of music.
- dcsommer 3y ago
  The classism/elitism problem is much more an image problem foisted/reinforced by pop culture than it is a real, inherent issue. When all you hear of classical music is on TV shows where it represents "the rich, elitist villain" or on ads for luxury goods, people reverse the association arrow. How many people who perceive classical music as elitist actually have a personal experience of someone on the "inside" acting elitist and shunning them as "outsiders"?
  - zozbot234 3y ago
    Historically, literate music has always been confined to elite settings. The common people played folk tunes transmitted orally, and later "popular" songs and dances when mass publishing of sheet music became a possibility. (There's actually no reason nowadays why this published "popular" music shouldn't become a part of the literate canon that's researched academically etc. But that only adds to a very long list of individual composers and entire musical traditions that end up being broadly neglected by standard academic POV's. It's also a general problem wrt. the study of human art and culture.)
    - dcsommer 3y ago
      https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-history-of-poor-peoples-access-to-classical-music https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-history-of-poor-peoples-ac... Sacred classical music was accessible to poor people in big cities. Secular classical music was less accessible though.
coldtea 3y ago
>The music really speaks for itself, I don’t see myself ever wanting to listen to this type of music, and no essay or other rationalization is going to change the way that I feel when I hear it. One could say that for Mozart or Bach (or the Beatles or Miles Davis or Bieber) just as well, as the argument basically amounts to personal taste, doesn't it?
- anon291 3y ago
  I think it's a valid point. Mozart and Beethoven's music was at the end of the day made to appeal to mass audiences. Although considered niche now, Mozart was quite the celebrity in his day and had a loyal base of (mostly female) followers. Whereas modern classical is meant to appeal to musicians, not a mass audiences. We forget that although there are many surviving transcripts of their work, Mozart and Beethoven also improvised and performed on stage a lot. That whole genre of classical music is lost.
  - zozbot234 3y ago
    Mozart's music was considered too edgy and quirky in his day, actually. People who were knowledgeable about music tended to like it a lot because they could follow all the twists and turns, but Salieri was the more popular composer with the mass public. The story with Beethoven is not very different, ultimately some of the simplest pieces of his were the most popular and he wasn't very happy about that.
    - anon291 3y ago
      > The story with Beethoven is not very different, ultimately some of the simplest pieces of his were the most popular and he wasn't very happy about that. I'm sure many artists fall into the trap of 'the public likes the work I like least'. That doesn't make the work not part of the authors creation. For example, Raffi makes extremely popular (and actually pretty good) music and I'm sure he absolutely hates having to play it over and over again. Still a better artist than Schoenberg.
  - vonjuice 3y ago

squidsoup 3y ago

If you consider Cage, Stockhausen and Glass part of the western classical music tradition, then I think we should consider composers like Nils Frahm, Ólafur Arnalds, Richard Skelton and Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith part of that continuum. There are people making interesting, innovative music that isn't academic or needlessly avant garde, that I think can appeal to everyone.

gnulinux 3y ago
> needlessly avant garde I'm sorry to say this but there is no such thing as "needlessly avant garde" in Western classical music tradition imho. WCM is about an artist finding his own sound, finding a unique musical language that puts them in the continuum all the way from Bach to him. If your music is not avant garde, it may be great music, but it's not going to be good WCM music. This is just my humble opinion. I almost exclusively listen to contemporary WCM these days, and the way I engage with WCM is different than the way I engage with other genres of music. Put it as film analogy, the goal is not to make the best horror movie, the best drama, the best scifi; the goal is to make the most creative/innovative/novel/personal/weird movie that happens to be horror, that happens to be drama, that happens to be scifi. At least that's how I enjoy WCM. Everybody experiences music differently, which is what makes it one of the most beautiful human phenomena. So in short, the more avant garde the better. Note that Schoenberg's music is already grandpa's grandpa music. We want innovation that goes well well beyond Schoenberg. I would consider 12 tone row music ancient at this point, not even remotely avant garde/experimental.
- zozbot234 3y ago
  I find it really weird when people just run with this misconception that western literate music somehow started with Bach, as if what people were playing before was something different and not really music. One can clearly hear continuity between late Renaissance and early Baroque style (17th c.) and even how the secular music of the later Middle Ages (the sources of which are sadly a bit too obscure, hence why it's not often performed even as 'early' music) was carried over into the early Renaissance. Bach's style was highly individual, blending highly developed structures and forms of earlier Renaissance music with the fully developed tonality of the later Baroque and the earliest elements of 18th c. ("galant, classical") style.
  - gnulinux 3y ago
    It was just a shorthand. Of course everybody knows it didn't start with Bach, duh. He is a very central figure though, and any work you'll put into an artistic tradition will inevitably be compared to the greats of the tradition.
- squidsoup 3y ago
  Most listeners are more interested in music conveying emotion, than novelty. If novelty is all WCM has to offer, it is not surprising that it has a dwindling audience.

Hunpeter 3y ago

There is definitely a lot wrong with the classical music scene in general (speaking as a classical pianist - in training). Most notably elitism/classism. I guess classical music also has lots of image problems and just has trouble finding its place in the world. Between the fact that in the last 200 years we've started to actually play and listen to older music (not to mention composing in older styles), the advent of sound recording and then the information age or whatever, it's understandable, really. I myself just feel lucky that I can enjoy most of this "challenging" music without needing to care about the magnificently strict structure, or how the composer wanted to channel God or something. All I ask is that people not question my sanity on the grounds of my liking of this kind of music.

dcsommer 3y ago
The classism/elitism problem is much more an image problem foisted/reinforced by pop culture than it is a real, inherent issue. When all you hear of classical music is on TV shows where it represents "the rich, elitist villain" or on ads for luxury goods, people reverse the association arrow. How many people who perceive classical music as elitist actually have a personal experience of someone on the "inside" acting elitist and shunning them as "outsiders"?
- zozbot234 3y ago
  Historically, literate music has always been confined to elite settings. The common people played folk tunes transmitted orally, and later "popular" songs and dances when mass publishing of sheet music became a possibility. (There's actually no reason nowadays why this published "popular" music shouldn't become a part of the literate canon that's researched academically etc. But that only adds to a very long list of individual composers and entire musical traditions that end up being broadly neglected by standard academic POV's. It's also a general problem wrt. the study of human art and culture.)
  - dcsommer 3y ago
    https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-history-of-poor-peoples-access-to-classical-music https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-history-of-poor-peoples-ac... Sacred classical music was accessible to poor people in big cities. Secular classical music was less accessible though.

coldtea 3y ago

>The music really speaks for itself, I don’t see myself ever wanting to listen to this type of music, and no essay or other rationalization is going to change the way that I feel when I hear it. One could say that for Mozart or Bach (or the Beatles or Miles Davis or Bieber) just as well, as the argument basically amounts to personal taste, doesn't it?

anon291 3y ago
I think it's a valid point. Mozart and Beethoven's music was at the end of the day made to appeal to mass audiences. Although considered niche now, Mozart was quite the celebrity in his day and had a loyal base of (mostly female) followers. Whereas modern classical is meant to appeal to musicians, not a mass audiences. We forget that although there are many surviving transcripts of their work, Mozart and Beethoven also improvised and performed on stage a lot. That whole genre of classical music is lost.
- zozbot234 3y ago
  Mozart's music was considered too edgy and quirky in his day, actually. People who were knowledgeable about music tended to like it a lot because they could follow all the twists and turns, but Salieri was the more popular composer with the mass public. The story with Beethoven is not very different, ultimately some of the simplest pieces of his were the most popular and he wasn't very happy about that.
  - anon291 3y ago
    > The story with Beethoven is not very different, ultimately some of the simplest pieces of his were the most popular and he wasn't very happy about that. I'm sure many artists fall into the trap of 'the public likes the work I like least'. That doesn't make the work not part of the authors creation. For example, Raffi makes extremely popular (and actually pretty good) music and I'm sure he absolutely hates having to play it over and over again. Still a better artist than Schoenberg.
- vonjuice 3y ago