From: jmwobus@spider.syr.EDU (John M. Wobus)
Subject: Alternate FAQ memo for rec.music.classical
Originator: jmwobus@spider.syr.EDU
Organization: Syracuse University, Syracuse, NY
Date: Thu, 23 Jul 92 23:55:51 EDT

Alternative FAQ Memo for Classical Music

I have read  Gabe Weiner's FAQ Memo for rec.music.classical and found
it excellent.  So please DO NOT READ THIS MEMO--read the other one
instead.  This memo is for those who don't like the answers they got
from the other one, or just need something to disagree with.

How to read this document: Imagine a ":-)" after each sentence.


THE QUESTIONS:

(1) Why do 20th century composers write music that no one wants to
 listen to?
(1A) How come no 20th century composers write music like the old days?
(2) I am interested in learning more about classical music.  What should
 I listen to?
(3) I heard a version of Mussorgsky's "Night on a Bald Mountain" that
 sounded different.  What goes?
(3A) Is it "Bare Mountain"?  or is it "Bald Mountain"?
(4) How come no one recognizes Glenn Gould as the great pianist that he
 was?
(4A) Are those grunts I hear on my Glenn Gould record?
(5) Was Vladimer Horowitz a fake?
(6) Why are we letting the pushers of period instruments take over?
(7) Which Bach piece is "Lighter Shade of Pale" taken from? 
(7A) Which Chopin piece is "Color My World" taken from?
(8) What are the 10 best pieces of classical music?
(9) Wasn't Schoenberg conceited to think he could ruin music like that
 and we'd let him?
(10) I am interested in learning to play a musical instrument.   Which
 one should I learn?
(11) Why should music majors have to learn Music Theory?
(12) Wasn't Schenker crazy to think that all music is basically
 variations on the same little piece?
(12A) Who the hell is Schenker?
(13) How can people listen to (some type of music)?  It all sounds alike.


THE ANSWERS:

(1) Why do 20th century composers write music that no one wants to
 listen to?

 Late in the 19th century, educated musicians decided that people were
 listing to "Art" music for all the wrong reasons.  At the same time,
 composers began to feel like they were just composing the same old
 stuff over and over again.  Composers killed two birds with one stone
 by starting to compose music which no one would ever listen to for the
 wrong reasons.

 Actually, believe it or not, within these constraints, today's
 composers put a lot of attention into making the music listenable and
 to writing something which will get played.  The idea that the average
 composer of contemporary music completely ignores his audience is
 simply not true.


(1A) How come no 20th century composers write music like the old days?

 There are those that do.  You don't listen to them any more than to
 the ones who compose noise.


(2) I am interested in learning more about classical music.  What should
 I listen to?

 Ein Kleine Nachtmusic by W. A. Mozart.

 If you want to listen to music that you might recognize parts of, then
 listen to Pachelbel's canon in D, Bach's Brandenberg Concerto number
 2/ 3rd movement, Bach's toccata and Fuge in D Minor for Organ, the
 first movement of Beethoven's 5th symphony, Bizet's Suite from Carmen,
 Brahms's Hungarian Dance number 6,  Tchaikovsky's Nutcracker Suite,
 Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture, Offenbach's Overture to Orpheus in Hades,
 Barber's Adagio, and Kreutzer's Etude #1 for Violin.

 If you REALLY have lots of time and desire, then listen to lots of
 Haydn and Mozart symphonies until they get REAL predicatable.  Then
 listen to Beethoven's Symphony Number 1 several times until you figure
 out what he did differently.  Then go to Beethoven's Symphony Number
 2.  After you finish all 9, do the same to Berlioz's Symphony
 Fantastique and Brahms's Symphony Number 1.  Also start trying all the
 other 19th century Symphonies.


(3) I heard a version of Mussorgsky's "Night on a Bald Mountain" that
 sounded different.  What gives?

 Mussorgsky's buddy, Rimsky-Korsakov, who considered himself a better
 orchestrator than Mussorgsky, did Mussorgsky the favor of
 reorchestrating some of Mussorgsky's works for orchestra.  We usually
 hear the reorchestrated version.  Lately, some have found Mussorgsky's
 less conventional orchestration to be less mundane.


(3A) Is it "Bare Mountain"?  or is it "Bald Mountain"?

 Without Shrubs.  It is a translation of "Noch' na Lysoi Gore" and we'll
 just have to wait a while until the proper authorities give their stamp
 of approval to a permanent, official English translation.

 
(4) How come no one recognizes Glenn Gould as the great pianist that he
 was?

 Gould's genius is not the type that is evident to all listeners.

 [Now there is a semantic-free answer]


(4A) Are those grunts I hear on my Glenn Gould record?

 Yes.


(5) Was Vladimer Horowitz a fake?

 If you think it is relevant that all performers start with a level
 playing field, as if concerts are like Formula Racing, then yes, since
 Horowitz had his piano modified to have the kind of touch that he
 liked.  Try convincing a violinist to subscribe to this principle.

 
(6) Why are we letting the pushers of period instruments take over?

 No.  It just seems that way to people who are annoyed by period
 instruments and who thus notice every performance, recording, or
 broadcast that utilizes period instruments as aliens trying to take
 over the territory.  People who play the period instruments often just
 see themselves as adding variety to what we listeners can hear.


(7) Which Bach piece is "Lighter Shade of Pale" taken from? 

 It's similar to a couple of different pieces, but if you listen to
 either of them and listen to "Lighter Shade of Pale", you will see
 that the melody is not the same.


(7A) Which Chopin piece is "Color My World" taken from?

 None.  It doesn't even sound like Chopin.


(8) What are the 10 best pieces of classical music?

 Beethoven's 9 symphonies and Brahms's first.

 If you don't like that answer, then Bach's 6 Brandenberg Concertos,
 Beethoven's 5th and 9th, Mozart's last, and, well, uh, Beethoven's
 Violin Concerto.

 If you don't like that answer, . . .


(9) Wasn't Schoenberg conceited to think he could ruin music like that
 and we'd let him?

 Schoenberg, who is often quoted as saying his own new procedure for
 composition will take over the world and last for centuries, has never
 lived it down.  His procedure, known as serial composition, specifies
 that the composer write a line of 12 pitches, each different (where
 pitches which differ by one or more octaves are considered
 identical).  Then the composition is made up of statements of this
 line (called the tone row) which may be modified by reversing it
 front-to-back, by transposing it, or by reversing it up-to-down, or a
 combination (giving you 48 ways).  The result is supposed to be in no
 key at all, i.e., atonal.  Many people hate the sound.

 Animosity toward Schoenberg stems from people who imagine Schoenberg
 simply said to himself "To mark my place in history, I'll use my vast
 influence as a famous and respected musician to create an original way
 to write music which will be so different and original that everyone
 for centuries will look upon me as the George Washington of music as
 it is writ".  Knowing what really happened will not change many minds
 about the music, but doesn't make him look quite so conceited.
 Schoenberg was one of a number of composers who saw that music was
 "loosening up" so-to-speak as people like Wagner broke more and more
 long-standing rules of harmony, and people like Debussy often just
 threw them out.  These young composers decided that the way things
 were going, music would get to the point where you could place any
 combination of notes in any context and it would be all right.  They
 decided to explore this trend and its "logical conclusion", the
 abandonment of any reference to tonality.  Look at them in a similar
 manner to the little dog that runs ahead of you in the direction that
 it thinks you are going to go (the obvious logical conclusion to
 the idea that Innovation is a necessary aspect of Good Art).

 Anyhow, they started composing music which was deliberately atonal--
 no major or minor chords or anything like that.  This music was NOT
 serial or written according to Schoenberg's later rules of
 composition, but sounded so much the same as some of Schoenberg's
 later music that you would really have to study it to tell the
 difference.  Anyhow, writing atonal music is not as easy as you might
 think.  If you should accidentally write a tonal chord or two, it
 would stick out, ruining the "atonal sound", like putting a jazz chord
 in the middle of a Mozart string quartet.  And using any note too many
 times in a short space of time made that note start seeming like the
 tonic or the dominant.  Thus you are forced to listen to what you have
 written and rewrite to get rid of such unwanted effects.  Schoenberg
 started noticing that one way to help prevent such unwanted effects
 was to avoid notes that just occurred in the piece.  At the same time,
 he was incorporating little (atonal) melodic motifs and (invented
 atonal) chords into the music, using the same elements in different
 places in the work, to make it a unified whole--just like you find in
 tonal music--nothing new.  Eventually, he stumbled upon the idea of
 using the same sequence of 12 notes repeatedly, which was a step
 towards achieving both goals, though a lot of work was still required
 to create music using this method.

 Schoenberg started out using his new procedure without telling anyone,
 thinking that he would awe people with the quality and quantity of his
 atonal composing.  He finally wrote about it when someone else started
 getting similar ideas and writing about them.

 Schoenberg clearly viewed serial composition as a means to an end,
 thus the rules were made to be broken as well as modified.  Many who
 haven't listened to the music imagine that his buddies Berg and Webern
 wrote music that sounds alike.  Actually, though they are known as a
 school, their music is not much alike at all and illustrate the
 variety of ways serial composition is used.  Berg, like Schoenberg,
 saw it as a means rather than as an end, but he broke the rules more
 than Schoenberg did, actually incorporating elements of tonality in
 his music instead of striving for strict atonality.  Webern, on the
 other hand, experimented with slavish adherence to the rules, and
 invented similar rules to control other aspects of the music like
 timbre and dynamics.  Since then, other composers have explored all
 three approaches and then some.  It is very much the case that no two
 serial composers sound alike.


(10) I am interested in learning to play a musical instrument.   Which
 one should I learn?

 Recorder.  If that is not what you meant, then flute.

 I am assuming that piano is out of the question.


(11) Why should music majors have to learn Music Theory?

 Why do soldiers dig holes?  If you think your discussion of the merits
 of theory class are going to influence your professors to change the
 rules just for you, you have another thing coming.  Your professors
 had to take those courses.

 Actually, this question is asked by numerous freshman music (and
 voice) majors every year, and is also discussed by many theory
 professors.  So if you are in the former category, study your theory
 real hard and you can get to the point where someone (besides
 freshmen) will listen to your objections.  Be warned that many
 musicians change their minds before they get to that point.

 The real reasons include the fact that so many have taken the courses
 or something like them that it is part of the culture, a culture that
 you presumably want to join, or why didn't you just go to NYC and sign
 up for private lessons with that money you are spending on college
 tuition?  It does include terminology for discussion of music,
 allowing you to discuss aspects of music with other musicians that you
 would not otherwise be able to discuss.  There are still probably open
 questions about whether theory adds anything to appreciation or
 performance.  The problem is that there are candidate
 counterexamples--fantastic performers who have had no formal theory
 training.  And trying to tie things up and list the exact aspect of
 music which none of these performers can do, as well as prove that
 they didn't get just a little formal training in that area, well, you
 can't sew up the arguments either way.

 You can look upon music theory as like studying the grammar of a
 language.  We study the grammar of foreign languages as we learn those
 languages to speed the process and prevent gaps in our knowledge.  We
 study the grammar of our own language long after learning the
 language, to make sure there are no gaps in our knowledge of the
 language as well as to simply study some of what people have figured
 out about what is going on when we read, write, speak, and listen
 (unless we are behaviorists).  In fact, a person can become a perfect
 speaker of their own language and others without studying a bit of
 grammar.  When you take music in college, you will get a "rounded"
 education going into greater depths into your own corner of the music
 spectrum as well as learn something about other types of music.
 Whether or not it is possible to grasp it all without any reference to
 theory, it is clear that for many students, studying theory will speed
 the process as well as reveal and fill in some knowledge gaps.


(12) Wasn't Schenker crazy to think that all music is basically
 variations on the same little piece?

 Well many melodies have obvious simplifications: first off, if there
 are ornaments, you can leave them out.  This gives you not the same
 melody, but one that is both similar and simpler.  There are often
 parts of the written melody that look the same shape as ornaments and
 can be left out.  Naturally, if you keep simplifying a melody this
 way, ad absurdum, then all melodies will eventually start looking
 alike (though perhaps you have to get down to a single note).
 Schenker liked to do this and proposed a little three note melody (the
 first 3 notes of Three Blind Mice) which he thought was always there
 just before reducing things to a single note.  He thought this was
 significant and an important element of music which conventional
 musical analysis (e.g. spelling the chords, writing in the Roman
 Numerals) overlooked.

 Some of the Schenker lovers like to quote him by chapter and verse
 while others feel he went a bit overboard at times but still like some
 of his general ideas.  His haters wander why you should be able to
 look at a piece of music and pick out three of the melody notes as
 being the most important, as if you could save time by leaving all the
 other notes out.  Those people must realize that the Schenker Lovers
 think the way in which the little melody is extended into something
 long is the interesting stuff.  They don't think the little 3-note
 melody has any interest whatsoever.


(12A) Who the hell is Schenker?

 A little German professor of music who had very weird ideas about
 music and whom lots of Music Professors believe to be the Einstein of
 Music Theory.  A result of this has been new wonderful theory
 curriculums which incorporate Schenkerian Theory, so depending upon
 which music school you attend, you may be learning Schenkerian Theory
 (perhaps not knowing it) or the old stuff.  So different graduates
 from different music schools may have learned wildly different things
 in their music classes.  The ones who learned Schenkerian Theory, of
 course, will succeed more often than the ones who didn't.


(13) How can people listen to (some type of music)?  It all sounds alike.

 About 90 percent of the criticism of different music genres that I
 have ever heard has been by people who claim that it all sounds
 alike.  This has been applied to all genres, usually by people who
 haven't listened to the genre very much.