From: elkies@zariski.harvard.edu (Noam Elkies)
Newsgroups: rec.music.classical
Subject: Re: Help Required. Dodecacophony. ;-)
Date: 7 Nov 92 04:00:29 GMT
Article-I.D.: husc3.1992Nov6.230030.17188
Organization: Harvard Math Department

In article <1992Nov5.225459.3425@nuscc.nus.sg>
smoliar@iss.nus.sg (stephen smoliar) writes:
~In article <1992Nov5.121516.17136@husc3.harvard.edu>
~elkies@ramanujan.harvard.edu (Noam Elkies) writes:
~>In article <1992Nov3.043025.28103@credence.com>
~>jeffw@or.credence.com (Jeff Winslow) writes:
~>
~>:In article <1992Oct30.175337.16944@husc3.harvard.edu>
~>:elkies@ramanujan.harvard.edu (Noam Elkies) writes:
~>:
~>:>and most listeners have not tired of the cornucopia of tonal music of this
~>:>and previous centuries.  
~>:
~>:Oh to be a babe in wonderland. Nice for them. What about the rest of us? 
~>
~>Come now --- were all musicians and listeners before c.1900
~>"babes in wonderland"?  Or do you suppose that all sophisticated
~>musicians of that time suffered for lack of atonal music?  Or
~>if not, that their 20th century counterparts must be bored
~>with tonal music only because atonal music is now also available?
~>
~Noam, in case you haven't noticed, it's not the nineteenth century any more

Believe it or not, I have noticed.  

~(and it won't be the twentieth for much longer)!  Musicians and listeners today
~carry around all sorts of contextual baggage which were just inconceivable in
~the preceding century.  Most important is probably the great abundance of
~resources for hearing music.

True, but...

~(Brahms never had to contend with music being pumped into his elevator.)

*That*'s your example of a new "resource for hearing music"!?

~                            Couple that with the greater abundance of general
~sounds which we take for granted as part of our ambient environment.  It is not
~at all absurd to say that we just do not hear things (ANY things) the way they
~did a hundred years ago.

Perhaps not absurd, but quite irrelevant to my point.  Brahms' music,
and Chopin's, and Bach's, and other music adored by our 19th-century
forebears still offers perceptive contemporary listeners plenty of
substance and, yes, beauty, even if they in some sense do not
hear it ``the way they did a hundred years ago''.

~                        The "babes in wonderland" are not the people of the
~nineteenth century;  they are the people of the twentieth century who would
~retreat to nineteenth-century standards.

You mean those who would actually dare to value Brahms above elevator
music?  You seem to be suggesting that such ``contextual baggage'' as
being subjected to a superfluity of MTV, Muzak, commercial ditties, etc.
invalidates one's experience of the tonal classics to such an extent as
to deserve the dismissive ``babe in wonderland'' insult.  I don't buy it.

~I do not think there are many of us around who are now bored with tonal music.
~We ARE bored with cliches which get worked to death in music which seems to be
~churned out by the yard.  Some of those cliches are the same ones that Max
~Steiner made a living from with his film scores, so there is certainly plenty
~of boring tonality around. [...]

That's not what I'm talking about.  There was plenty of boring tonality
around in the 19th and 18th centuries too, even if it came in different
and less overbearing cultural contexts.  There's also good 20th-century
tonal music that might have delighted and astounded Brahms.

~                 When there are cliches wherever you turn, it can be very
~relieving to hear a good primal scream come out of a tone row;

Talk about your 20th century cliche!

~but it can also be relieving to hear a new way to play a triad!

depending on context, I suppose (and I mean that in the musical,
not ``cultural'', sense...)

--Noam D. Elkies (elkies@zariski.harvard.edu)
  Dept. of Mathematics, Harvard University
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