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Post by Trog on Mar 23, 2019 13:28:05 GMT
Financial TimesR70,000 for a single ticket? A sad reflection on what a cultural backwater South Africa has become, is that about a year or so ago I spoke to a 'Tannie' who thought that nobody made such music anymore - that the last such performances staged in the world were more than 30 years ago. Initially I could not really credit it - I eventually figured out that in South Africa today, if you are not internet-savvy and you have to depend entirely on what you are being fed through radio and TV, that is what you would come to believe. She refused to believe me when I told her that there are more than 50 active professional symphony orchestras in Germany alone. List of symphony orchestras in Europe
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Post by cjm on Mar 24, 2019 5:37:44 GMT
Financial TimesR70,000 for a single ticket? A sad reflection on what a cultural backwater South Africa has become, is that about a year or so ago I spoke to a 'Tannie' who thought that nobody made such music anymore - that the last such performances staged in the world were more than 30 years ago. Initially I could not really credit it - I eventually figured out that in South Africa today, if you are not internet-savvy and you have to depend entirely on what you are being fed through radio and TV, that is what you would come to believe. She refused to believe me when I told her that there are more than 50 active professional symphony orchestras in Germany alone. List of symphony orchestras in Europe What is the situation though on the side of new compositions?
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Post by Trog on Mar 25, 2019 7:29:56 GMT
What is the situation though on the side of new compositions? It is changing. It went through a horrible 5-decade period of experimentation, but there seems to be a realisation that this has been an artistic dead end, and a return of the desire to create accessible music. I started off on a long ramble about my thoughts on this, but I found that there are more precise answers on Quora: A few of my own: Most classical composers these days spend their time composing film-scores: Star Wars, Battlestar Galactica, Troy, Gladiator, Harry Potter and so on. I guess that most film-music has to conform to certain requirements: It must create atmosphere, carry emotion and evoke – and yet it must always remain in the background. Film music is almost never about the music and always secondary to the story, except in those very rare cases where the music is actually the point of the movie. It therefore lacks many and even most of the elements of what would make a piece of music sufficient unto itself – i.e. something which that can stand on its own merits. Not to demean modern-day composers – I suppose that many of them are competent and important in the development of music further on, but I do suspect that we do not, at the moment, have the same quality of people actively working as composers as we had in the past. I suspect that most of those people with the intellectual capacity to be as powerful a composer as the previous greats prefer, these days, to do something else – they become engineers, doctors, scientists, mathematicians. These are occupations that today are much more secure and lucrative, with much more status, than what they were in the past. One-and-a-half century and more ago, becoming a hot-shot composer was probably the reverse: If Bach had to choose between being a Kapellmeister or an engineer or scientist, I’m sure that he would’ve considered Kapellmeister to be vastly more secure. I also believe that current classical composers have lost their way, a bit. They have become captives of the same sort of ‘death of the author’/’death of the narrative’ malaise that infects the authors of serious literature. So, quite independently of film scores, all the rest of current classical composition appears to foster an ambiance of existential nihilism, of a denial of narrative. Now I believe that great music has this capacity to be immediately engaging – people respond to it the very first time they hear it. And I also suspect that to be immediately engaging requires a strong narrative. In the absence of narrative, one hears something and then one simply forgets it almost immediately. It also has the effect that they (modern day composers) all sound almost the same, because they are all telling the exact same story – to whit, that there is no story.
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Post by cjm on Mar 25, 2019 7:49:08 GMT
What is the situation though on the side of new compositions? It is changing. It went through a horrible 5-decade period of experimentation, but there seems to be a realisation that this has been an artistic dead end, and a return of the desire to create accessible music. I started off on a long ramble about my thoughts on this, but I found that there are more precise answers on Quora: A few of my own: Most classical composers these days spend their time composing film-scores: Star Wars, Battlestar Galactica, Troy, Gladiator and so on. I guess that most film-music has to conform to certain requirements: It must create atmosphere, carry emotion and evoke – and yet it must always remain in the background. Film music is almost never about the music and always secondary to the story, except in those very rare cases where the music is actually the point of the movie. It therefore lacks many and even most of the elements of what would make a piece of music sufficient unto itself – i.e. something which that can stand on its own merits. Not to demean modern-day composers – I suppose that many of them are competent and important in the development of music further on, but I do suspect that we do not, at the moment, have the same quality of people actively working as composers as we had in the past. I suspect that most of those people with the intellectual capacity to be as powerful a composer as the previous greats prefer, these days, to do something else – they become engineers, doctors, scientists, mathematicians. These are occupations that today are much more secure and lucrative, with much more status, than what they were in the past. One-and-a-half century and more ago, becoming a hot-shot composer was probably the reverse: If Bach had to choose between being a Kapellmeister or an engineer or scientist, I’m sure that he would’ve considered Kapellmeister to be vastly more secure. I also believe that current classical composers have lost their way, a bit. They have become captives of the same sort of ‘death of the author’/’death of the narrative’ malaise that infects the authors of serious literature. So, quite independently of film scores, all the rest of current classical composition appears to foster an ambiance of existential nihilism, of a denial of narrative. Now I believe that great music has this capacity to be immediately engaging – people respond to it the very first time they hear it. And I also suspect that to be immediately engaging requires a strong narrative. In the absence of narrative, one hears something and then one simply forgets it almost immediately. It also has the effect that they (all modern day composers) all sound almost the same, because they are all telling the exact same story – to whit, that there is no story.
Using a number of the ideas above:
If *ordinary* people are not prepared to pay for music, it may as well not exist. Extrapolating: A capitalist society will produce more popular music than a socialist one. It gets better: As the demand for popular music grows (and the remuneration improves), more capable people will be drawn to the occupation! Over time it means that the music will also improve. Perhaps not in the style desired by the academics, but it will become more sophisticated and also in tune with humanity.
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Post by Trog on Mar 25, 2019 8:56:32 GMT
Using a number of the ideas above:
If *ordinary* people are not prepared to pay for music, it may as well not exist. Extrapolating: A capitalist society will produce more popular music than a socialist one. It gets better: As the demand for popular music grows (and the remuneration improves), more capable people will be drawn to the occupation! Over time it means that the music will also improve. Perhaps not in the style desired by the academics, but it will become more sophisticated and also in tune with humanity. The problem is that the way society is structured today, particularly and ironically within a capitalist society, the decision to pursue a career as a composer of music is a high-risk one. Really capable people are typically risk-averse and tend to make decisions that will maximize their future security. Conversely, it is characteristic of the creators of contemporary popular music that they more or less drifted into their occupations, mostly because they were incapable of doing anything else. So, I'm not too optimistic of large armies of high-potential people being drawn into composing popular music. Particularly since the high-earners in popular music these days are not the people who actually created the music - in spite of the fact that remuneration in the popular music is probably already as comprehensive as it can possibly be. So I'm a bit sceptical about the idea that the economics of popular music will drive an increase in the quality and sophistication of popular music.
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Post by cjm on Mar 25, 2019 10:11:13 GMT
Using a number of the ideas above:
If *ordinary* people are not prepared to pay for music, it may as well not exist. Extrapolating: A capitalist society will produce more popular music than a socialist one. It gets better: As the demand for popular music grows (and the remuneration improves), more capable people will be drawn to the occupation! Over time it means that the music will also improve. Perhaps not in the style desired by the academics, but it will become more sophisticated and also in tune with humanity. The problem is that the way society is structured today, particularly and ironically within a capitalist society, the decision to pursue a career as a composer of music is a high-risk one. Really capable people are typically risk-averse and tend to make decisions that will maximize their future security. Conversely, it is characteristic of the creators of contemporary popular music that they more or less drifted into their occupations, mostly because they were incapable of doing anything else. So, I'm not too optimistic of large armies of high-potential people being drawn into composing popular music. Particularly since the high-earners in popular music these days are not the people who actually created the music - in spite of the fact that remuneration in the popular music is probably already as comprehensive as it can possibly be. So I'm a bit sceptical about the idea that the economics of popular music will drive an increase in the quality and sophistication of popular music. I was thinking more along the lines of popular classical music. Popular in the sense indicated by you ie classical music other than the experiments driven by academics, music along the lines of the Mozarts, Beethovens etc, but with a more contemporary flavour, shorn of the 12 tone pretensions. Although it probably is artificial to try and put music into different boxes, I did not have in mind the whining of Die Heuwels is fantasies and Francois van Coke.
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Post by Trog on Mar 25, 2019 15:05:11 GMT
I was thinking more along the lines of popular classical music. Popular in the sense indicated by you ie classical music other than the experiments driven by academics, music along the lines of the Mozarts, Beethovens etc, but with a more contemporary flavour, shorn of the 12 tone pretensions. Although it probably is artificial to try and put music into different boxes, I did not have in mind the whining of Die Heuwels is fantasies and Francois van Coke. Sorry, I totally missed your point. I agree that the solution for contemporary classical music (and all music generally) is for modern classical composers to write music that appeals to people. Not necessarily ALL people, but at least to those people of the type who can understand that some are prepared to pay R70000 for a single ticket to attend an opera. And there are enough of those. And I think that the penny has dropped - there is a noticeable movement towards writing more engaging music. Phillip Glass is probably the one with the most stature. Interestingly, he also composed an opera based on JM Coetzee's novel "Waiting for the Barbarians". I've tried to find online excerpts of this, but without success, so far. I've been trying to find something somewhat shorter than this by Arvo Pärt, as in like less than 4 minutes, but he doesn't seem to have produced anything less than 7 minutes. There are certainly works being composed today that will eventually find their way into the established repertoire. As I remarked earlier, I find them to very similar to each other. Also, although pretty enough, I find them slightly lacking in the WOW factor. Operas are also rather rare. The reason is surely because writing an opera is a huge risk - it will take 2 to 3 years out of a composer's life, and to stage an opera is a multimillion dollar enterprise. If it flops, that is a huge chunk of investment gone. Therefore, I reckon a composer might struggle to even get his opera staged. I think what they need is one really great composer to step up and consolidate what they have been doing these past 50 years into something coherent for it to really take off in a big way. That is what all the great composers actually did - they defined a new idiom instead of following one. Maybe Mahler's great-great-(great?)-grandson?
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Post by cjm on Mar 26, 2019 8:50:20 GMT
Sorry, I totally missed your point. ... Not your fault. I am bad at contextualising arguments - have been since my school days. For some reason I often assume that the context in which I make statements is clear or obvious.
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