From: smoliar@whitehead.iss.nus.sg (Stephen Smoliar)
Subject: Re: tonality and modern music
Reply-To: smoliar@iss.nus.sg (Stephen Smoliar)
Organization: Institute of Systems Science, NUS, Singapore
Date: Sat, 21 Nov 1992 02:37:51 GMT

In article <kkw1xnm@rpi.edu> mccomt@marcus.its.rpi.edu (Todd Michel McComb)
writes:
>In article <1e9hloINN4c6@calvin.usc.edu> William Alves writes:
>
>>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.
>
I think the operative concept in the above discussion is "experiment."  The
issue is not that of process versus product but rather the current social
obsession that all activity must result in a product to be held up for public
assessment.  Beethoven knew better than to publish his sketchbooks, let alone
all those fruits of his improvisation.  He had the liberty to experiment with
his material without being accountable for his every action.  Today it seems
as if composers no longer have that luxury.  Experiments are all right as long
as the results are successful;  but if the results are always successful, they
are not experiments any more, are they?  Actually, the situation is rarely any
better in science.  Funding agencies want concrete results;  they are not as
interested in what we may learn from our failures.  The cinema industry, of
course, has its share of experiments which fail by the time they get to the
movie house;  but how often is it the case that a single failure can ruin a
director's career, no matter how many successes preceded it?  Until society
is willing to develop a healthier attitude towards experimentation, creativity
will probably be condemned to be plagued by alienation between the creator and
his public.
-- 
Stephen W. Smoliar; Institute of Systems Science
National University of Singapore; Heng Mui Keng Terrace
Kent Ridge, SINGAPORE 0511
Internet:  smoliar@iss.nus.sg
Newsgroups: rec.music.classical