That massively depends on whom you ask. Karl-Heinz Stockhausen often is mentioned in this context - but that guy is an acquired taste, and the older I get, the more I like his work. Morton Feldman is also a household name, which I personally find compositionally uninteresting.
> Morton Feldman (1926-1987) was convinced that he was a major 20th century composer. That point of view put him in the minority. Now, 26 years after his untimely death, people are starting to agree.
It's Béla Bartók all over again. I wonder if there's an unwritten rule in nature that truly creative composers have to die before people recognize the value of their work?
A counterexample to this pattern is Philip Glass, who is receiving some recognition, but by virtue of being recognized in his own lifetime, may undercut his own reputation.
That's a strange dichotomy of choices. Another post in this thread backs up entirely my point that this is music to be played in the background, not thoroughly consumed and heard. [0]
> I think to this day its great background music for programming work
This article was nothing more than sponsored content for a contemporary artist who already has all of the success, publicity, and fandom he could ever need. By leveling him to a tier much closer to reality, and throwing out the names of much more accomplished and more musically-important 20th century composers, I hope to provide a counter-point to The Guardian, which is neither an authority on music nor the broader culture.
Very highly unlikely. The method in the paper isn’t measuring quality or novelty or authenticity or listenability or anything useful for evaluating composers without listening to them. It’s measuring the compressibility of MIDI files. We already know that Bach is less compressible than Philip Glass, and more compressible that Charles Ives. The methods in this paper cannot tell you if a composer is boring or derivative, nor whether they’re fresh and innovative for their time. They also can’t tell you anything about a performance. I mean go ahead and try, I’m all for experimenting, but I predict that trying to apply this paper to looking for overlooked composers will be an exercise in sifting through noise, more effort than searching manually, and spending time writing code instead of listening to good music.
> That arrangement lands particularly hard on contemporary composers, who must compete with a group of semi-mythical figures who are worshipped as house gods.
Likewise, it's probably true that the popular history of modern science focuses on too small group of well-known 20th-century scientists. But if you're going to lay out that argument you probably should not choose John von Neumann as your example case.
Same with W.A. Mozart. He's the semi-mythical gods' semi-mythical god. Where another composer might write a menuet Mozart might have three dances with conflicting time signatures sounding at the same time (yet agreeing in their harmonies). And that's just in passing-- it's not even a climactic moment of the opera (which itself manages to exceeds that moment in historical importance).
Or he might throw a wildcard variation into a theme and variations and end up writing a folk-like melody so convincing that it's extracted for a 21st-century commercial to sell Irish whiskey.[1]
The impact of Mozart is that you can strip away all the pretension and hero-worship from the classical world and his music would probably still take up its current proportion of worldwide performance time. It turns out his music really is that striking and stands out when people listen closely.
I think that there are several issues with this perspective.
Firstly, it presupposes that the music and the ‘concept’ are distinct. I love say Mahler 2 and the Rite of Spring but I love those pieces as a collection of notes and a concept together and trying to separate the ‘concept’ from the notes is impossible - when I listen to them the concept is an essential part of the experience.
In this case I can imagine listening to the notes in the knowledge of the wider context and being profoundly moved by the experience. I don’t see this as any different to music that is highly repetitive (and so not ‘interesting’ musically), for example, but still elicits an emotional response from many listeners.
Finally, if the classification is of composers into two camps, with Cage being in the wrong camp, then I’m afraid that the idea that Cage’s music won’t survive long isn’t backed up by the evidence as most of it is still doing really well many years after it was composed.
I don't know about that. I think every major composer up to the mid 20th century gets a fair shake - and are undoubtedly not in the same league as the aforementioned 3. Composers from the last 70 years are harder to evaluate owing to the 'post-melodic' trend.
Personally I listen to the likes of Hans Zimmer, Jesper Kyd, Garath Coker, Ramin Djawadi, Michael Giacchino, etc when I'm looking for orchestral/symphonic instrumental music.
I don't think you could call them studio musicians - which was how John Williams started out (working for Mancini) but I can't imagine them fitting what is considered "classical" at the Guardian.
Ultimately, it is up to the eye or ear of the beholder: I neither like the Beatles nor Mozart. Give me some Polka and I'm happy.
While there may be differences in skill of the composers and musicians, that is largely irrelevant. Art only is if it is appreciated. Complexity and skill without any appreciable quality is busywork. However, appreciation of the masses comes with hitting the average taste.
There's some more obscure classical music that I happen to be a huge fan of. Problem is, with that music I came on listening to it as if it were a song and not a composition. When I listen to Steve Reich's Music For 18 Musicians, the first music I think to compare it to is Sufjan Stevens, who's a pop songwriter. Or I'll listen to Philip Glass and think of rock riffs. The problem is that for those more modern musicians (and for certain older, less well-known ones) is that we don't have the same conservative respect for them, and we have fewer interpretations of their music. When I listen to Einstein on the Beach, there are only two known recordings, and they're of music that's so innovative that your thoughts aren't about the interpretation, they're about the design of the music period.
(I'd also like to add, as an aside, that Hacker News sees the most bizarre stories submitted. Every article I've written that's at all tech-related gets passed over; without fail every article I'm insecure about writing and worry will be passed over finds its way here.)
Well sure, most of Feldman's work could be described as "minimal" but saying it is part of the body of work that is typically referred to as "minimalism" is a little disingenuous, in my mind.
But maybe it just makes it more obvious that these categories aren't particularly useful. I think it's interesting to talk about those early works in the 70s and compare them to minimalist art, like Judd's or Serra's sculptures or paintings by Sol Lewitt, Stella, etc., but it's just a component of a much broader conversation that needs to be based in listening first.
It's interesting to me that Glass' early music didn't really click for me until I had stood inside of one of Richard Serra's Bands sculptures at LACMA. It gave me a different mental (and metal, haha) framework to engage with the music through. That's probably why the Berio/Feldman comparison was so surprising to me in the first place, because I feel like the music from those composers both demand different kinds of engagement to find them enjoyable that Glass' early music, both as a listener and a performer.
I had a flat mate at university who was a music major; I once mentioned that I'd discovered an obscure Italian composer that I liked-- he very quickly made it obvious that the composer was not obscure and that he was one of the most prominent composers of a certain style in a random decade. Obscure is somewhat relative, but it is usually taken in the context of people who know _something_ about the subject matter. My position is that the composer was indeed not obscure, I was just ignorant of the wider culture and knowledge of musical history.
My experience with Reicha is mostly through his wind quintets, which are all competent, but not especially memorable IMHO. Which is very close to how I feel about Haydn. Reicha is actually more famous among woodwind players for popularizing (maybe originating?) the ensemble than for any of his individual works. Even a lesser work of Beethoven like his wind octet seems like a much higher standard to me. (To be fair, I've made the same criticism in the past of the following 50 years of Romantic-era music.)
There are sadly many composers who might've been more obscure if they hadn't had someone like Bernstein to popularize their works. Nielsen, Martinu, and William Grant Still are three of my favorites whose symphonies deserve to be much more widely played.
"When I listened to Mozart last year, I thought classical music was all about the composer. Today I realized the performer matters just as much"
That's certainly true to an extent. But some performers won't suit your taste, and if you judge the music because you picked a poor performance (like you might get on the cheap imports), you might miss some incredible music. I can't stand Karajan's Beethoven, good thing I didn't start listening with him.
I can't tell someone exactly why I like Mozart best when Marriner's conducting, or why Serkin just does the Emperor better. But once you know you like a composer's work, then you'll start to prefer some performances over others.
The great part is that this slowly changes all your life, and that really great music never gets old and you can repeat the same chills you got when you were 20. It's a lot like Sherlock Holmes that way!
Steve Reich is a fantastic example. Four Organs is unlistenable to me, but I find Music for 18 Musicians and Electric Counterpoint beautiful. Part of it comes from performance exposure. I enjoy music I've studied and devoted time to understanding well enough to play.
As a percussionist, I find Clapping Music enthralling. Pure rhythm. Nothing else. I'm under no illusion, however, that this is mass market appeal. That's ok with me.
> I usually see this idea of a heroic great artist (compared to artists who presumably don’t have what it takes to merit being mentioned) in discussions around classical music.
Well, it depends - the idea you talk about is certainly out there, but I think most commenters don't really take it all that seriously. There's a lot of great stuff in classical music that's by unheard-of, "minor" composers, and even some pieces the composer of which is entirely unknown, and we can only make guesses as to their rightful "attribution". As to the focus on the "quality of the work", there is a bit of a hierarchy in classical music where some genres (i.e. "formats" of music) are considered to be inherently more worthwhile than others. In instrumental music, for example, a "concerto" or an "overture" would be a chance for the composer to show off their best work, while a "symphony" would be slightly lower in ambition, and maybe a "suite" would be slightly lower again. So if you're familiar with these designations, you can kinda sorta predict what the composer will be going for, and whether it will be derivative "filler" or not.
I think you deserve a more thought out response than I have time for just now. I've tried to be judicious in my original comment and not point out specific artists I prefer or take issue with.
But I'll say this, I'm specifically only talking about the direction high-art has taken that I'm finding troublesome. Pop music and its equivalents in other media I don't really have a problem with. It's the modern day equivalent of a Jig, a Gigue or a Sarabande. By definitely, it's the perfect representation of der Geist seiner Zeit. That kind of art is doing its own thing and I'm specifically not talking about it (though that would be an interesting discussion by itself).
- lest you think I'm poo pooing the entire field, here's some music I think is worthwhile for us to both enjoy, Steve Reich's later works like this http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zLckHHc25ww and I'm coming at it as somebody who once aspired to be a professional concert violinist.
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