From: roger@crux.Princeton.EDU (Roger Lustig)
Newsgroups: rec.music.classical
Subject: Re: Help Required. Dodecacophony. ;-)
Date: 8 Nov 92 05:40:03 GMT
Reply-To: roger@astro.princeton.edu (Roger Lustig)
Organization: Princeton University
Originator: news@nimaster

In article <1992Nov7.211719.18280@dartvax.dartmouth.edu> Joseph.J.Marcheso.Jr.@dartmouth.edu (Joseph J. Marcheso Jr.) writes:
>In article <1992Nov5.225459.3425@nuscc.nus.sg>
>smoliar@argon.iss.nus.sg (stephen smoliar) writes:

>> Their
>> admirable predecessors found Beethoven hard to listen to, too, just as they
>> found "too many notes" in Mozart.)

>I believe Noam was referring to the Atonal style and not particualar
>composers in that vein. Also while SOME may have found LATE Beethoven
>hard to listen to NO-ONE rejected the style of composition.People

Actually, lots of people did.  For instance, those who found Beethoven
turgid and preferred Rossini.

>actually liked the Romantic period!! 

While hating much of its great music.  That's a bit too general a statement
to mean much.

>I can't remember reading one
>instance when someone said that "My God!! Let's go back to Baroque."

I can think of hundreds that complain about the excess complexity of 
leading composers' styles.

> The "Too many notes" cliche made popular by the movie is becoming a
>tiresome attack on the validity of Mozart. 

Huh?  Who has used it to attack Mozart?  The whole point of this (true)
story is Mozart's comeback.

>Believe it or not many
>audiences DURING HIS TIME, actually liked his operas witness the
>success of Zauberflote and Figaro (Figaro's success came also in other
>productions around Europe). 

Figaro's success came *mainly* in other productions around Europe.

>No one rejected the Classical style of composition either. 

How could they?  It iddn't exist.  "The classical style" is a poor 
way to describe the various styles of music all over Europe in 
1750-1820 or so.

But some people *did* reject Mozart's style.  Consider the many writers
who wrote things like  "Mozart's music is too heavily spiced.  What 
palate can stand that for long?"  Mozart's chamber music passed out of 
fashion within a few years because it was too hard to play.

>I defy you to find me another period in which the
>STYLE of music has been under such constant and direct attack. 

I defy you to find me another peiod in which there were so MANY styles
as there are in the 20th century.  At not time has 12-tone music 
or atonal music been "the STYLE."  It has always been one of many.

>The argument that people don't like it because they don't have a lot of
>knowledge about the music is silly. Music is primarily an emotional
>medium where the listener FEELS it's expressiveness. If atonal music
>needs to be listened to with a manual to fully enjoy its work (and
>sufficiently praise its creator) than it ceases to be an emotional
>medium. 

True but irrelevant.  Perhaps the music wasn't *written* for everyone!
Perhaps it was written for people who HAD taken the time to get to know
a lot of music quite intimately (I'm talking about the repertoire from
Bach through Brahms) and thought about the musical possibilities opened
up over the centuries.  Perhaps the music was written for people who
don't just like to sit back and "let the music wash over you" (George
Axelrod).  Perhaps the music presupposes listeners who want to engage
themselves actively with the music, perhaps hear it several times,
perhaps study it a bit, and THUS achieve a state of mind in which the
emotional appeal of the music becomes apparent.

I might point out that, to perhaps 95% of American listeners, Rigoletto
and Otello and Meistersinger are basically pleasant noise that 
doesn't tell them much at all or move them emotionally at all.  How 
does one get to a condition in which one can appreciate the emotional 
value of these pieces?  By just the things you deplore: acquiring 
knowledge about them.  By learning the tunes.  The stories.  By learning
about the composers and the things the composers cared about, not least
their respective homelands.  

For the record, EVERY opera requires a manual for full enjoyment.
It's called the libretto.

>(I don't understand Tristan or Otello at all but I'm still
>raptured by them)     

And is that full enjoyment?  Wouldn't it help at least to know the
plot?  Or would that detract from your enjoyment?  (I don't believe
you don't know them at all, btw.)

Now, are you "raptured" by, say, the Missa Pange Lingua of Josquin or
the motets of Guillaume de Machaut?  Why not?  Is this bad music?  Or
do you simply lack the knowledge, the exposure, the interest in the
why and the wherefore of the music? 

> Never in History has the weight of enjoyment been placed so much on
>the listener and the responsibility removed from the composer. If

Bullshit.  Considering the extent to which composers go out on a limb
merely to compose, this statement is laughable.  As for responsibility being
placed on the listener, so what?  Perhaps some listeners *want* to take
on some responsibility.  (Note also that in this century listeners 
have become more and more irresponsible, i.e., lazy, and not even bothered to
get to know the thousands of easy-to-listen-to pieces ritten in their
times, preferring the old warhorses time and again.)

>knowledge continues to be a criterion 

Knowledge has *always* been a criterion.  Only in the mid-to-late
19th C was the basic listening public for what we consider the "Classics"
anything other than a tiny, elite minority.  Most Europeans of Mozart's
day never heard a note of his music.

>then the only people who will
>listen (or care to) will be other musicians and then this art will be
>firmly out of the realm of the average audience. 

As has always been the case.  The average audience has *never* cared
much for the most advanced music.

>btw if you look at
>music from broadway to R&B to Pop to heavy metal to Christian rock to
>Country etc,etc you'll see that they're ALL tonal music and the
>audience (those blissfully ignorant babes in wonderland) continue to
>find it interesting and exciting and keep coming back for more. 

No doubt for the musical qualities.  I'm sure the colorful harmonies
of the Nashville sound fascinate you endlessly.  

This is your silliest and most irrelevant statement yet.  How much of
this music is listened to for its musical qualities?  People who like
melody and harmony -- or even the interesting interplay of words and
their settings -- soon grow tired of most of the genres you list above.
Or, if they don't, they don't listen to them in order to appreciate those
things.  I like R&B, but I wouldn't want to go to a quiet, sit-down 
concert of it.  Would you?  No.  You'd want to dance to it.  The music,
and to some extent the words, aren't particularly important.  (The
performance is generally more important than what's being performed, 
especially with Heavy Metal.)

>P.S. I find it perfectly dreadful :-)

Then you're a damn fool.  Or you just don't know how to listen to
those genres.

(Hint: it takes some exposure and knowledge.  These are obtained, as
with any music, not through book learning, but through acculturation.)

>Hummmmmm,

I'll fake the rest.

Roger
Newsgroups: rec.music.classical