Meet the new Miss Moneypenny

Something can be both sublime and avant-garde.

Largo's Shark wrote:

Perilagu Khan wrote:

Ligeti and Lutoslawski are much of a muchness to my ears. Messaian is another. I don't dislike them, but they all huddle together in their miserable and trendy rejection of beauty and euphony.

Reactionary nonsense. There's plenty of otherworldly beauty and spiritual epiphany to be found in Ligeti, Lutoslawski and (especially) Messaian's oeuvres. One just has to be open to their alien and yes, often dissonant sound worlds. I for one find Messaien's Quatuor pour la fin du temps just as moving as Bach's Mass in B Minor.

The fact that you claim their choice of musical idiom was down to fashion or some kind of mass weltschmerz shows how little you know about those three composers. Ligeti if anything was numbed by his experiences in a concentration camp as a teenager, but miserable or angry? Nah.

Arguably one of the most miserable and neurotic composers in the annals of history was Mahler, and while he pushed romanticism to its limits and paved the way for the Second Viennese School, I wouldn't say his music is of the same character as Messaien's, who was indebted far more to Debussy along with the meters of Ancient Greek poetry, Hindu rhythms (tdlas), Gregorian chant, the Indonesian Gamelan, and of course, bird song.

Actually, one just has to be open to ugliness, clash and clangor rouged up as music. And all in the name of alt-sophistication of course. So see? You really are a member of the avant garde herd. My congratulations.

"The fact that you claim their choice of musical idiom was down to fashion or some kind of mass weltschmerz shows how little you know about those three composers. Ligeti if anything was numbed by his experiences in a concentration camp as a teenager, but miserable or angry? Nah."

Well, at least he was not miserable and angry. I'm glad I didn't argue that he was.

Largo's Shark wrote:

tiffanywint wrote:

Perilagu Khan wrote:

Ligeti and Lutoslawski are much of a muchness to my ears. Messaian is another. I don't dislike them, but they all huddle together in their miserable and trendy rejection of beauty and euphony.

Boy you guys speak a whole other language. I consider The Rolling Stones, Goats Head Soup album and Warhol faze to be somewhat avant-garde.

You like Jerry Goldsmith's PLANET OF THE APES and Leonard Rosenman's FANTASTIC VOYAGE, dontcha Tiff? Those are avant-garde.

Thank-you for that. I guess I am somewhat avant-garde, without having a clue mind you.Actually now based on what I have learned in this thread, the only music of the Rolling Stones, that might be considered avante-garde would be their Satanic Majesties Request album from 1967.

Largo's Shark wrote:

I for one find Messaien's Quatuor pour la fin du temps just as moving as Bach's Mass in B Minor.

It's a gorgeous piece.

PK's claim that it's the equivalent of the emperor's new clothes is uncharitable to the point of being insulting, since it suggests that anyone who does claim to find the piece beautiful is either a knowing liar or has completely deceived themselves.

Perilagu Khan wrote:

Actually, one just has to be open to ugliness, clash and clangor rouged up as music.

Profoundly ignorant dismissal of a huge chunk of 20th century music with an infantile description that reads like a translated excerpt from the bleeding Zhdanov decree or a contemporary review of Stravinsky's Rite of Spring. Hey, at least you avoided "cats running around in a piano", "monkeys with instruments" or "a piano falling down a stairs."

I'll happily stick with my Entartete Musik.

Perilagu Khan wrote:

And all in the name of alt-sophistication of course.

All in the name of personal expression, which you seem to believe should include only encompass tonality, or your narrow standards of beauty.

Perilagu Khan wrote:

So see? You really are a member of the avant garde herd.

Coming from a member of the reactionary, stuffy, easy listening brigade, I take that as a compliment.

Perilagu Khan wrote:

"The fact that you claim their choice of musical idiom was down to fashion or some kind of mass weltschmerz shows how little you know about those three composers. Ligeti if anything was numbed by his experiences in a concentration camp as a teenager, but miserable or angry? Nah."

Well, at least he was not miserable and angry. I'm glad I didn't argue that he was.

"Miserable and trendy rejection of beauty and euphony.."

Perilagu Khan wrote:

PK's claim that it's the equivalent of the emperor's new clothes is uncharitable to the point of being insulting.

Precisely. As a composer influenced by those artists myself, whose art I'd go to the grave defending because I enjoy it, it hit a nerve. But then as the Romans said, De gustibus non est disputandum. Horses for courses.

The learned Khan has been schooled. :shock: May watch Apes/Voyage double-bill next week, (as I do own both films), to mark my new, albeit limited, appreciation for the avante-garde. :study:

Apes and Voyage was an actual cinema double-bill btw.

Largo's Shark wrote:

Perilagu Khan wrote:

Actually, one just has to be open to ugliness, clash and clangor rouged up as music.

Profoundly ignorant dismissal of a huge chunk of 20th century music with an infantile description that reads like a translated excerpt from the bleeding Zhdanov decree or a contemporary review of Stravinsky's Rite of Spring. Hey, at least you avoided "cats running around in a piano", "monkeys with instruments" or "a piano falling down a stairs."

I'll happily stick with my Entartete Musik.

Perilagu Khan wrote:

And all in the name of alt-sophistication of course.

All in the name of personal expression, which you seem to believe should include only encompass tonality, or your narrow standards of beauty.

Perilagu Khan wrote:

So see? You really are a member of the avant garde herd.

Coming from a member of the reactionary, stuffy, easy listening brigade, I take that as a compliment.

Perilagu Khan wrote:

"The fact that you claim their choice of musical idiom was down to fashion or some kind of mass weltschmerz shows how little you know about those three composers. Ligeti if anything was numbed by his experiences in a concentration camp as a teenager, but miserable or angry? Nah."

Well, at least he was not miserable and angry. I'm glad I didn't argue that he was.

"Miserable and trendy rejection of beauty and euphony.."

Perilagu Khan wrote:

PK's claim that it's the equivalent of the emperor's new clothes is uncharitable to the point of being insulting.

Precisely. As a composer influenced by those artists myself, whose art I'd go to the grave defending because I enjoy it, it hit a nerve. But then as the Romans said, De gustibus non est disputandum. Horses for courses.

The large majority of twentieth-century classic music, including Sacre du Pritemps, is at best interesting. It is, in the main, an assault on the ears, an insult to good taste, and a solipsistic exercise in nihilism. Those such as yourself who grovel before every aural train wreck authored by the latest avant garde savant are sycophants without a mind of your own and bereft of the good sense to reject slop offered up as souffle.

As to personal expression, I'm all for it. In fact, I'm very close to being a free speech absolutist. This stance extends to 21st-century compositional hacks and those who suckle at their teats.

Regarding the charge of being a reactionary, I can only take that as a compliment coming from a member of the vapid, pretentious, postmodern barbarism phalanx. Your contemporary lodestars will be the faded footnotes of a cultural dark age a century from now. The composers I revere will be seen as titans as long as civilization persists. Then again, if your type get their way--and they currently are--the days of civilization are numbered.

Well, at least he was not miserable and angry. I'm glad I didn't argue that he was.
"Miserable and trendy rejection of beauty and euphony.."

I see that my point sailed over your head.

Perilagu Khan wrote:

The large majority of twentieth-century classic music, including Sacre du Pritemps, is at best interesting. It is, in the main, an assault on the ears, an insult to good taste, and a solipsistic exercise in nihilism..

Le Sacre at best merely interesting? It's one of the most moving, sensual, and compelling compositions ever written, or at least to my ears. It started my love of classical when I first saw FANTASIA at the age of 3. Fear eventually turned into curiosity, then into appreciation, and finally familiarity. It's an old friend. I've even thought about getting the opening bassoon solo tattooed to my chest at one point.

And for the record, I consider the music of Bryan Fernyhough, Michael Finnissy, Richard Emsley, and the majority of Stockhausen's work among many others - to be pretentious, fraudulent, needlessly complex, dull, and an assault on the ears of the poor sods who have to play it, let alone audience members.



In the words of a Youtube commenter:

Quote :

Finnissy began his pianistic career playing on Wednesday evenings at the Tulse Hill Home for the Profoundly Deaf. He eventually disowned the "New Complexity" label that had attached itself to his music during the 70s and 80s, and in the 90s became a leading member of the "Making It Up As I Go Along" School. He is available for funerals and divorce court proceedings. In Who's Who, Finnissy lists his hobbies as "shouting at pigeons" and "humming an augmented fourth below my tinnitus".

There's also works of avant-garde composers who I admire that I don't care for much (i.e. a number of Penderecki's early pieces). I take it as it comes, and just because I dig Ligeti's Double Concerto for Flute, Oboe and Orchestra, that doesn't mean I'm some kind of sycophant or groupie. It strikes a chord with me.

I just think what you're doing is throwing in a lot of great art unfairly with crap, or more eloquently in your words "solipsistic exercises in nihilism." That's all. All I'm asking is maybe to listen to more Dutilleux (one of my favourite living composers), Takemitsu, or Rihm, and give them another chance. They're all highly individual composers who stayed true to their own convictions in the face of the trendy serialist dogma of the 60s.

I draw back the rhetorical ammunition, and apologise for lashing out. I didn't get much sleep, and I felt that music, my lifeblood was being wrongly attacked and pigeonholed. Honestly I should never have begun this argument in the first place.

Lets get back to Tits Broccoli.

LS,

Please note that my criticism of modern and postmodern composers was conditioned by the phrase "a large majority." I stand by that statement. But even if I throw a large majority of composers under the podium, there remains a significant worthwhile remnant out there. As I stated earlier, I don't necessarily dislike Lutoslawski and Ligeti. I even find Messaian arresting if sometimes difficult to swallow.

But there's music of Part, that I like. Hohvaness, Martinu, Gorecki, Prokofiev, Moeran, Holmboe, Bloch, Howells, Rota, Hindemith, and Diamond have all produced surpassing compositions. Indeed, Prokofiev (along with Bruckner) is my favorite composer. So we're probably not as far apart as it may seem.

And I do apologize if I personalized this a bit much. We agree on the vast majority of issues. I guess that makes the rare disagreements all the more stark and jarring.

:)