Re: Musical languistics - Mass Reply

----- Original Message -----
From: "Jan van Steenbergen" <ijzeren_jan@...>

>  --- Sally Caves skrzypszy:
>
> > [...] Stravinsky is just too "atonal" for my friend's
> > mother, and to my own mother-in-law.  I went to someone's house
> > last week where we listened to his compositions on Sonar.  He
> > was very fond of using musical patches and microtones like free-
> > form brush strokes and combining them.  He also had the volume
> > cranked up way too high.  It was almost unbearable.  I felt like
> > those Asians listening to Bach.
>
> Are you speaking about Stravinsky here? It would surprise me, because
AFAIK he
> never wrote a single micronote during his entire life.
No, I was talking about the man who used Sonar to make his own music.  The
remark about Stravinsky being too "atonal" was made by my friend's mother.
Stravinsky is a modernist composer, and didn't fit her taste for Chopin.
That was *her* word.  Maybe she used the word "dissonant."  At any rate, she
didn't like him.  Who was his contemporary who popularized the use of a
twelve tone scale?  I'm blanking on his name.

> And the only stuff he
> wrote that was sort of atonal was written in the fifties and sixties, and
these
> are definitely not his best known works.
Alright...  Maybe we need a definition of atonal, twelve tone, microtone.  I
would appreciate it.  My musical knowledge is all self-taught.  And what I
pick up from my musical husband.  Twelve-tone I understand.  But not
microtone.

> > Animals respond to music, I'm told.
>
> They definitely do. In how far this has to do with the emotional load of
the
> music, I don't know.
It's a mystery.  Maybe it's the rhythm in some music.  My cat definitely
does not like Bruce Springsteen turned up high.  Especially "Born in the
USA."  Her ears switch back in distaste and horror.  Her eyes glare.  She
doesn't leave the room, though, I notice.

> Have you ever listened to polyphonic vocal music from Georgia? In my
opinion,
> this belongs to the most to the most beautiful things that ever meet the
ear.

I would like to listen to this.  Can you name some names?

> The kind of music you are referring to is nothing but a current in music
that
> dominated the 1950s and 1960s. Nowadays, only a few people still take it
> seriously. Since then, many different currents have emerged (or
reemerged):
> minimalism, postmodernism, neoclassicism, neotonality (the so-called "New
> Spirituality"), postserialism, aleotorism... I really can't imagine that a
> person who loves classical music would like at least one of those, unless
he
> just wants Beethoven, Beethoven, and more Beethoven.
> In general, people who claim that that they don't like contemporary music
> simply haven't listened well enough.
AGREED!  Can you give me some representative composers for these terms?  I
know Steve Reich and Philip Glass for "minimalism" (I like their work a
lot), but what constitutes "postmodernism"?  This is such a broad term.
What about neoclassicism (is this a contemporary movement in music?).  What
is neotonality and who composes this (the so-called "New Spirituality"--it
sounds like "New Age," a term I loathe)?  Never heard of postserialism or
aleatorism.  The latter, though, I can imagine: aleatory means "random,"
"left to chance."  I imagine this is the music I was complaining about in
another post: the pings, the pongs, the silences, the drum rolls, the
silences.  On the other hand, though, I like surprises in music.  Again, who
is most representative?

>  --- Sally Caves skrzypszy:
>
> > I don't know what Zairean means.  How would you, Adam, react to
> > Chick Corea, for instance, especially his "Children's Songs"?
> > Or Stravinsky, or even Philip Glass?   I find these composers
> > structured, intense, and dark.
>
> Stravinsky is absolutely favourite composer! Structured yes, intense yes,
but
> dark? If you ask me, Stravinsky wrote about the brightest music ever
written in
> the 20th century!
I guess it's completely subjective.  Okay, I'll agree that Stravinsky is
"bright."  I like bright things, too.  Let me examine what it is I mean by
"dark."  Not all Chick Corea is "dark."

> > I like a lot of the minimalists.
>
> Me too, especially Steve Reich and Louis Andriessen. Philip Glass I can't
> swallow. But I give him this: he is probably the only composer who ever
became
> a millionaire with composing.
> (Does this make Marc Okrand the Philip Glass of conlanging?)
HAW HAW!

> > What I guess I don't care for--and this is the 'non-musician'
> > in me speaking--are pieces that violate expected rhythmic
> > patterns;
>
> Well, wouldn't that depend largely on what you expect? I mean, the average
> listener to pop music is accustomed to 4/4 to such a degree, that even 3/4
> would be way off.
Again, it's subjective.  Perhaps I didn't express myself well enough.  I
find that even I don't understand completely why it is I like or not like
something.  Many things improve for me when I listen to them over and over
again.

> > I can't name any composers, James could, but those pieces
> > where someone pings here, then silence, then a couple of
> > drum rolls, then silence, then a crash of symbols, silence,
> > then rowing on the strings, and another isolated ping... I
> > find myself writhing in my seat.  Give me the dissonant, vile
> > noise, so long as their is a building energy in it!
>
> I, on the other hand, believe that such music *can* be extremely
energetic. All
> depends on who writes it, really. And I cannot deny that music of the
music you
> describe is as horrible as it sounds!
>
> In my choral works, I try to treat the text as naturally as possible,
without
> creating extremely difficult rhythmic patterns. After all, no spoken text
> follows a strict 4/4 or even 3/4, and only a tiny part of all poetry
would. The
> result as a high level of metric irregularity (say,
2/4|5/8|7/8|3/4|6/8|etc.),
> but nevertheless I do my best to keep it natural.
Great!  I find that in my compositions, too,  which are obviously not as
intricate as yours, or as sophisticated, violate meter all the time.  I
often have a hard time deciding whether it's going to be common time, 2/4,
6/4, or 5/4.  I've tried to do pieces where the base is in one time and the
treble in another. :)  This was for a simple little song that I haven't
recorded yet.

> Of course, film music is about
> effect, but IMO a much more astounding effect can be achieved when the
music is
> in complete opposition to the scene you see (like, for example, in the
final
> scene of Dr. Strangelove).
Like "Blue Moon," played while the protagonist in "An American Werewolf in
London" is changing painfully into his monster!!  Like the incredible,
repetitive song that comes on during the credits to "The Mothman
Prophesies."  My friends hated it;  it was "inappropriate," "didn't fit the
mood of the film"; I couldn't explain why I liked it.  We got the soundtrack
just for that song.  The celebration of the inevitability and elusiveness of
mystery.  (We like moody, fantasy stuff in film).

> > I would also count among my very favorite classical composers
> > Albert Roussell, writing for Lily Laskine (I can't remember if
> > he is late nineteenth-century or early twentieth), but
> > "Impromptu," pour l'harpe, which I transposed to the piano
> > when I was twenty and played pretty competently once, has a
> > fury and an intensity that I like in much unusual classical
> > music--full as it is of unexpected chord combinations and
> > melodic progressions, and constant accidence.
>
> Yes, I know it. Beautiful piece.
Isn't it?  There is a certain understated aleatory quality to it balanced by
this kind of clockwork frenzy: as though something is being winded up, and
then let loose, and then it relaxes, and then it winds up again.  And then
it relaxes.

> Well, as I wrote above, I don't like Williams. Some film composers that I
*do*
> like are: Bernard Herrmann, Howard Shore, and Danny Elfman. I just *love*
Danny
> Elfman!
Danny Elfman is a genius.

> > I love the baroque period and the Slavic Romantics.
> > And taste changes over time.  I used to dispise Chopin
> > as some of the most repulsive stuff ever composed.
> > Now I sorta like him.
Oh, Chopin is okay.  I played a lot of Chopin back in my salad days.

> I still cannot stand Chopin, probably because I spend too much time at the
> Chopin Academy in Warsaw; pianists who study there are spoonfed with
Chopin
> till they throw up. Musical history, they are taught, can be subdivided in
two
> categories: 1. Chopin; 2. all the other stuff.
HA!

> What I particularly don't like in Chopin's music, apart from the terrible
> mannerism, is the fact the 80 % of the notes are nothing but linking
material.

Hmm.  Interesting.

Sally Caves
scaves@frontiernet.net
Eskkoat ol ai sendran, rohsan nuehra celyil takrem bomai nakuo.
"My shadow follows me, putting strange, new roses into the world."

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