From: mccomt@marcus.its.rpi.edu (Todd Michel McComb)
Subject: Re: tonality and modern music
Organization: Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, NY
Date: Tue, 17 Nov 1992 03:11:43 GMT

In article <1e9hloINN4c6@calvin.usc.edu> William Alves writes:
>In article <x#w1+yc@rpi.edu> Todd Michel McComb writes:
>>There is also the much reported animosity of composers directed at listeners.
>>I do not think this really exists.

>Neither do I, but I do think that a certain indifference exists among some
>composers, which Babbitt and Carter epitomize. It is true that their music
>is every bit a personal expression as Beethoven's, but their expression has
>moved, I think, to a different level. Beethoven was working in a certain
>idiom which described large scale forms, appropriate harmonic progressions,
>voice leading, and countless other conventions, but he still was able to
>arrange these techniques in such a way that they expressed what he wanted
>on a note-to-note basis. His sketchbooks are filled with illustrations of
>his process of honing a melody.

Speaking of Carter, I recall reading in the notes to the Arditti Quartet's
recordings of his music that for one of the quartets (I have forgotten
which; the second maybe?) there are hundreds of pages of sketches -- ten
times as long as the actual score.  I think the note-by-note comment is
important, though.  I have to agree that some modern music does not seem to
place much importance on individual notes.  But this is also the case in large
post-Romantic orchestral music.

It is really the new emphasis on note-to-note writing that I admire in
Beethoven's late music (like the middle movement of the op.110 sonata, my
all-time favorite), and to some extent he was improving his own concentration
on single notes in this music.  And then in the 20th century, there is Webern
with his intense concentration on the smallest gesture, and the fine and
varied individual note markings in Babbitt's Sextets.  Finally, my own 
preoccupation with Scelsi is motivated as much by his concern for the power
of a single sound as by anything else.

>There is something visceral and direct about a great melody and harmony
>conceived of in the conventional idioms of the day - even if it sometimes
>stretches those idioms. I think that most people cannot perceive the same
>logic and composer's voice, the same balance of surprises and fulfilled
>expectations in modern nontonal music. Part of it may be unfamiliarity,
>it's true. But I think there is something much more fundamental that dis-
>tances many listeners from this music. Babbitt in the article that you
>mention recognizes this difficulty, and instead of just suggesting further
>listening for familiarity or education towards greater understanding as
>many have done, he hits us with the provocative question: why should the
>composer be any more concerned with the layman's appreciation than a
>physicist working on a new theory?

Yes, I think that much of the fundamental distance comes from the fact that
most listeners do not share the world of the composer.  Perhaps this is more
true now than in the past.  Regarding Babbitt's question, though, I feel
that a composer has some obligation to try to draw in the listener -- at least
in some works -- and I think Babbitt does do this, posturing aside.  There
is a quote from a famous scientist (who I cannot remember right now) which
says that a person does not really understand something unless he can explain
it to the person on the street.  I work on a lot of things that many people
may not understand, but I always come back to that.  So to answer the
question, I think the two should be equally concerned, that is to say that
though it may not be an important factor at the beginning of an exploration,
the interested layman's appreciation is ultimately crucial.  (It was really
the wallowing in jargon that turned me off to research in mathematical
physics -- to pick a random field in which I happened to write a doctoral
dissertation. :-)

>I don't think it's primarily the dissonance, lack of conventional melody,
>or even the atonality that stands in most people's way - it's the fact
>that for many composers processes have become the expression instead of
>the means to expression.

I don't know about this.  Certainly much of serial *theory* is about processes.
However, I do not hear this in much of the music -- again, take Boulez' Le
Visage Nuptial as an example.  There may be some processes going on, sure,
but the main thing is the erotic expression.  Going back: Is a Bach fugue
a process?  Is the third movement of Brahms' String Quintet in G process
music?  Is Josquin's Ave Maria a process?  To some extent they all are, and
to some extent there is process-music written today.  The processes may have
become more complex (and that may be part of the problem) but I do not believe
that they are used so differently.  Moving to Xenakis as an example: I have
written before about how I view much of his early music as experimental, and
not the first thing to look at when considering Xenakis the artist.  When he
started stochastic music, there was a large amount of unrelenting process; now
he is using his experience to write freely expressive music like: Oresteia,
Akea, Tetora and Echange (my personal favorite).  So, I think that there is
experimentation going on, and some of these more purely process oriented works
may fade into oblivion, but there is also a further exploration of musical
expression -- there are new processes in use and perhaps one day a stochastic
process will have the same sort of impact (archaic, but powerful) as the fugue
in the last movement of Beethoven's op.110.

>>But people become frustrated, and hurt.
>>If an artist pours out his soul, only to be met with hostile reactions from
>>an audience who (perhaps justifiably) has difficulty relating to what is
>>being expressed, he will be hurt.  This can easily manifest itself in all
>>sorts of invective -- particularly if the composer believes that the audience
>>is criticizing without basis.  Composers also say strange things which can
>>alienate listeners; I know I do it often.

>Why is this? Is it just a lashing out? Certainly Schoenberg was often talking
>about his having to deal with openly hostile critics all of his life. But
>there's something else, too.

Are you asking me personally?  In that case, sometimes it is lashing out,
sometimes it is saying thing which people misinterpret, sometimes I don't even
know what I'm doing.  I have violent mood swings.  Often I concentrate so
much on something that I forget where I am (see various Norbert Wiener
stories).  Sometimes I put ice cream in the closet, sometimes I leave my
money in the cash machine.  And of course I've had critics all my life; or
sometimes just people who want to test out what this genius stuff (and I
honestly don't even know what that term is supposed to mean any more) is all
about.  Going back to the more constructive cases, sometimes it seems best
to provoke a confrontation in order to get past something -- sometimes it
doesn't work.  Mostly there is the fact that I am extremely critical of myself
and will always entertain the possibility that the critic may be right.  That
produces a lot of frustration which has to break out someplace.

T. M. McComb

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