From: roger@crux.Princeton.EDU (Roger Lustig)
Subject: Re: Help Required. Dodecacophony. ;-)
Originator: news@nimaster
Reply-To: roger@astro.princeton.edu (Roger Lustig)
Organization: Princeton University
Date: Wed, 11 Nov 1992 16:23:11 GMT

In article <MQ1SBS4S@cc.swarthmore.edu> abrocke1@cc.swarthmore.edu (Aaron Brockett) writes:
>In article <1992Nov8.054003.14240@Princeton.EDU>, roger@crux.Princeton.EDU
>(Roger Lustig) writes:
[huge amounts deleted]

>  Roger, pardon me if I'm missing your point, but you seem to be saying
>that the difficulties that modern audiences encounter when listening to 
>contemporary music are not qualitatively different from those  
>encountered by audiences in the past.

On the contrary.  I am arguing that there *are* qualitative differences,
and that you've misinterpreted them.

>   I think this simply isn't true. An average listener from Verdi's 
>time who heard Rigoletto out of context might have perceived it
>as merely pleasant noise, but that's quite different from an 
>average modern listener who hears Ralph Shapey's latest piece as 
>_unpleasant_ noise. Verdi's audience (or Liszt's or Brahms' or 
>whoever's) might not have been familiar with the _particular_ 
>use of harmony in a piece, but the fundamental language it was 
>written in would have been easily recognizable. 

But that doesn't explain why so many people are far *less* interested
in, say, Rigoletto, the first time they hear it, than people of a
century ago were.  The "common" musical language is still there.

Moreover, the context in which a person would have heard the tune --
as part of *modern* music, of the music of their own culture -- is
not there today.  Rigoletto today is a product of historicism, of 
a canonized repertory that does not change much over time.

Now, because of the EXISTENCE of this canonized repertoire, composers have
taken a different tack.  It's a thankless task to try to break into
the canon, or at least it involves writing in a style pretty much unrelated
to the rest of the living musical world.

>The problem is 
>that the basic musical language of today's listeners' is not much 
>different from that of audiences in the nineteenth century. 

On the contrary: it is radically different.  It is based on 150-year-old
music, whereas the musical language of 150 years ago was based on music
then current.  This time warp is the crux of the matter.

>We grew up on
>Greensleeves and Silent Night and most of us spent a good amount 
>of time listening to pop music at some point--almost all of the 
>music in our environment (barring the occassional film score, etc) 
>is firmly tonal. 

Though most pop music diverges from common-practice tonality in its harmony,
melody, and rhythms.  This has been true for about 70 years now.

>Our very speech patterns are simply arpeggios of 
>a triad with an occassional seventh thrown in! 

No.  This is simply wrong, simply irrelevant.  Let's not get off on this
track.

>What we are conditioned 
>to hear, from birth, is tonal music. Even those of us who get some
>amount of music education merely have the same patterns hammered in. 
>My school, Swarthmore College, a liberal arts college with (I believe) 
>a very good music department, offers five semesters of 
>theory which don't take students past the earliest works of 
>Stravinsky. 

How embarrassing.  

>Thus even someone with a B.A. in music might have 
>almost no exposure to works which aren't primarily tonal.

That's utterly shameful at a school like Swarthmore.  I'm glad I didn't
go.  (At Princeton we *did* learn a little about music of our own
century.)

>Thus I feel that there very much is a greater challenge to the 
>audiences of today when confronted by modern music. 

Fine.  So what?  Where have I contradicted any of this? 

The key word is "audiences."  Modern music wasn't *written* for audiences
not willing to take the time to confront it!  The modern movements (e.g.,
Debussy, Stravinsky, Skryabin, Schoenberg) came out of an atmosphere in
which all of educated society considered music to be the central art 
form (unlike today -- another basic difference) and in which lots of
people were interested in highly complicated music and its advancement,
and were willing to take the time to confront novelty with patience and
learning.  

The AUDIENCE today is far different from the one around the turn of the
century.  Among other things, music has lost its primacy: movies, TV, 
radio, photography, mass theatre, etc. have taken some of the place of 
music.  Many people find classical music boring and stuffy.

>Now, having gone 
>through all that, let me say that I feel that much of atonal music
>is wonderful; it's just much less intuitive. Listeners in the last
>century had to do some work in order to fully understand the music 
>of their time (or of any time, for that matter; Josquin is a good
>example) and we should expect to do the same. However, much music of this 
>century also requires, I feel, an extensive retraining of the ear 
>in order to appreciate it. 

I'm not convinced of that; I think it requires a retraining of the 
mind, a willingness to fail to "get" something the first few times.

>This is the burden that many modern listeners
>are unwilling to undergo. It is difficult, but I personally feel that 
>it's quite an adventure.

And the Swarthmore music dept. is certainly doing its bit to make it
more so...

Roger