I can't really dismiss anything from this list. Most of the pieces here are either beautiful, daring, inspiring, interesting or fascinating in one sense or another. Or well, Cage is misrepresented here. 4:33 is not a compositional style but more a kind of statement that tells us to also listen to the silence. Cage was very diverse and daring throughout his whole life. And why shouldn't he be? "I can't understand why people are frightened of new ideas. I'm frightened of the old ones." - John Cage
harry partch once said he spent a great deal of time looking for truth. after that great deal of time he said that there are many truths. his work was reflective of his time. if we had the luxury of composing everything that reflected our time and our concept of truth, no matter how ugly or wonderul that truth may be in our time, how would each piece be received?
I see you dislike musical evolution, so I wanted to say something about that: If there wasn't musical evolution all we would have right now would be monodic chants and some primitive instruments. So learn something about music and its history before posting a video like this, as you clearly can't notice the gigantic leap between Bach and Ravel, and I don't think you know much about music before Bach.
PS: No one can force anybody to compose in one manner or another.
Well the answer to your question is that we are not pushed in either direction, or at least I was not. I was encouraged to pick and choose from the elements of whatever period I liked, to learn from what I loved to disregard what I disliked. The beauty of the period we are in now is that we can be who we want to be, ears have been trained to appreciate extreme levels of dissonance knowing that a less dissonant passage or consonant passage will bring us greater joy in the grander scheme.
Think outside the box dude. All of these are composers in their own right. It's called EVOLUTION. You're probably pro-monarchy and a creationist too. OPEN YOUR MIND!
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@dsteffey77 Not everything 'outside the box' is of interest. You're correct however ! I am pro monarchy, and a 'creationist'. But I don't believe in anything just 'because' - I have very good reasons for the things I believe.
While innovation is good, it doesn't mean that just because a song is unique it's good. Art isn't just pure innovation, it's innovation that makes you feel something. That's the problem that I see with a lot of modern art.
@Unnamed0909 it's not just innovation, it's innovation with sense, you can innovate on two ways, changing the proces to achive something or achiving something new, this people try to do bouth things, and it's beautiful. lets remember that people like you said that beethoven's grosse fugue was no music, the parameters are always growing =) (sorry for my english =))
A lot of brilliant minds presented here--I think WW I was a game changer..in a cuppla decades we went from rural, romantic music depicting nature and great heroic struggles. Then around 1900 came cars, airplanes, lights, Freud, radio, E=MC2, machine guns, recordings, photographs and industrial warfare. Things were more impersonal and some composers depicted dark, violent, culture-shock modes of sound. The composer was "above" society with no constituency anymore so the music sounds like nothing.
1. This was and excellent video...The 20th century has been a time of unprecedented technical and scientific achievements...many of which are completely devoid of God and Spirit...Although I am not saying the composers of the first group are devoid of God and Spirit, their work reflects the consciousness of the chaotic upheaval that atomic warfare, remote neural monitoring and genetic engineering have brought to humanity.
2. As more people turn inwardly to Spirit as a means of stabilization from the ever growing demands of technology on the psyche, the more harmonious music compositions will begin to be sought and valued again by the artistic elite as it will be a more accurate reflection of the mass consciousness. Just as a note, some of the composers of the first group have produced quite stunning and deep pieces such as Ligeti’s Lux Aeterna. Peace, love and light!
And by the by, to those who say just let composers do what they prefer, the conservatoire system only promotes 'atonal' avantgardism. .Or tonal music with a cheap novelty. Just look at their 'professors'. This is why all the connoisseurs have retreated into appreciating those such as Beethoven and Bach better.
I do dislike the modern 'conservative' composers who write their 'music' in a tasteless and second-rate tonal manner, very often unpleasantly stealing from greater musicians, but the musical 'progressives' are very often tenth-rate artists who have the right connections or get lucky doing something absurd and worthless. As fun as special effects are, why should one go to a concert? That is why I have turned to a method of microtonal scales which preserve the musicality of the tonal system...
@SirSwerling an interesting comment about stealing, because 'stealing' has always been a recognized and respectable part of this great tradition. As quoted by O.Wilde 'Talent imitates, genius steals'. Though innovation is useful it is not at all the main event. The art tradition has always taken the best ideas of the past and re-issued them in different forms, respecting the original and in this way each time adding new dimensions and making the greatest achievements accessible to new audiences.
@richtomes I meant in the tasteless sense. All the big film composers for example, Horner, who just does the same score over and over with the Rach motif, Zimmer, who steals from actual music and even has a team to steal for him and even Williams, though everyone seems to have a special soft spot for him. He's stolen grotesque amounts boorishly. Your point is that synthesizing the great events of the past into new music is a good thing..
@SirSwerling ...and I agree when then properly but when you take a piece exactly and change the key and time signature from common time to 7/8 just to give it a very slight novelty feel, that is not progress.
En efecto el arte es una celebración, un ritual a nuestros antepasados, pero no todos provenimos de la misma tradición. Puedo disfrutar de ambos grupos de compositores y ninguno es mejor que el otro.
Por otro lado, ¿Qué hay de malo en tomar el 9-11 como una obra de arte, no es acaso parte del mismo ritual, la celebración de la especie humana? ¿o el juicio es por la muerte?, ¿pero cuántos esclavos tuvieron que morir para construir una sola de las 7 maravillas del mundo, entonces eso no es arte?
Things changed so radically because of the war and globalisation. The art of group A was necessary and inevitable. Not all of it is nice, but all of it is important!
Despite not being born beyond the 1920's, I think Francesco Balilla Pratella and Luigi Russolo, among other Futurist composers, are (stylistically) a noteworthy mention for Group A. Their experimental compositions tie in with the principles advocated by the composers mentioned in Group A, only they proceed their concepts by a few decades, which could class them as influential to a number of Group A composers.
@NoirSeth7 I think it's only fair to give equal representation to the 20th century traditionalists as well as to the post-NVS 'dropped cutlery' department, as André Previn put it, and it's interesting to hear them in parallel. I think it's worth remembering that even when a certain movement started preaching that there was nothing meaningful left to say with tonalism and melody, countless 20th century geniuses proved them wrong.
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I liked the video. I think a lot of group A composers are great living examples of the emperor´s new clothes... One thing that is not quite fair in the way you categorize the composers, everyone in list A was born AFTER 1920 (except John Cage). In List B almost everyone was born right at the turn of the century over 20 years earlier on average. Something important happened in those 20 years that changed. Called the 2nd Vienese School which included Webern, Schoenberg and Berg amongst others.
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@NLMF2011 I omitted the 2nd Viennese School deliberately to show the before and after effect. 20 years in a 500+ year old tradition is almost nothing. Consider the gap between Haydn and Mozart, or between Beethoven and Schubert. So when I see a change take place in so short a time which is so radical that the new style bears no resemblance whatsoever to what has gone before, I'm inclined to think that what has taken place is not really the true continuation of the lineage.
@richtomes But wait! You are making a point without considering the big picture. When looking at the entire spectrum of life as it relates to TIME itself One cannot help but question your point. Let me ask you to consider this...maybe the 20 years between Hayden+Mozart developed as they did because the temporal reality in which they lived only allowed for that much progress. TIME itself is different in the 20th cent. 20 years? Our evolution moves at a different pace ETC.
@richtomes comment continued... Although to be fair, I have to say the difference between A and B group is glaringly obvious. If it were up to me I personally would not consider Stockhausen as the "Mozart" of the 20th cent. ETC. ETC. but rather as a representative of an entirely new and for the most part unrelated way of thinking, approaching, and executing the very idea of what MUSIC is. To me that is the point...making your comparison somewhat silly in my opinion.
Comp student speaking. Your "Group A" composers are a group with vastly different compositional styles and, I suspect, philosophies and ideologies. You've cast post-tonal music as tyrannical, disgusting, and unartistic. You've misrepresented entire schools of thought. The historical development behind the styles of Xenakis, Cage and Stockhausen is extremely important to understanding their music. You've done anyone interested in 20th- and 21st-century music a disservice.
@SirTwitchyferr The historical development behind any composer's style is important to understanding their music, but this is just a slideshow of composers accompanied by short clips of their own music. Sometimes it's better to just let your ears do the appreciation.
@SirTwitchyferr One should be able to simply LISTEN to a piece of music without having to "understand the historical development". Do I have to understand the historical development Carmina Burana to appreciate it? HELL NO. I'm a music major as well and I say a piece of music should connect with the listener outside of the library and in the concert hall! I do believe that a recognizable rhythm is essential for a piece. These atonal pieces don't have rhythm at all. Rhythm is the foundation.
@TheDavid2222 Uh, its called atonal, not arhythm. Also you obviously don't even understand what rhythm is, saying things like that. Besides, if you don't instantly appreciate a work on first hearing, it doesn't automatically mean there is something wrong with the work. Maybe you've never heard anything like it before, or you don't know what to listen for, what interesting things you should register. People shouldn't always need instant gratification when enjoying art.
Anyone here likes both Group A and Group B??? I'd consider Stravinsky as a big influence in Group A too, and Cage itself is not that far apart from Stravinsky. I actually like Stockhausen and Cage a lot, but I also love guys like Stravinsky, Britten and, especially Rodrigo.
My answer to the question posed in this video: It is never easy to break from the past, however there will come a time when the past will have no relevance and will gently fade away. Slowly but surely we are heading in this direction.
The "group A" composers (like other groups) ARE few of the most intuitive and innovative artists of the XX century. The judge of Stockhausen about 9/11 was misunderstanded, and in a artistic and avantgardistic contest it HAD a deep meaning !!! Than U've missing many colossal composers like Denisov or GUBAIDULINA ...
some people -and some artist- are able to see even is own disgrace as a part of a whole -the life, the universe- rather than just conplaining or feel sorry for it, think on the greek tragedy for example. a great disgrace might be then, a great part of the life, wich is in what the art is ispired by the end. maybe that was what Stockhausen meant to say.
by the way, i read somewhere else a part of this same declaration "It is a crime, you know of course, because the people did not agree to it."
Don't see the point in trying to categorize things like that. Further more your chosen pieces by barber and orff aren't really a good representation of the overall character of the bulk of their works.
Of all the quite large number of better known composers you can find one that will fit in any slot in a continuum from the most distorted to the most tame-mainstream Schaffer/Henry, Scelsi, Ives, Alwynn, Hartley, Bax, Williams. Even among the composers that you list you can find pieces by them that you would fit in either your A group or your B group. Both Stravinsky and Copland wrote serial pieces. Schnitke wrote a few conservative pieces.
@richtomes Science is art by itself!! The same way music, painting or sculpture can be both mass-appealing as introspective, it all relies on the eye of the beholder. I personally find really entertaining some really weird compositions by contemporary composers.
My ears judged, and decided that the modern material was a merciful and formally interesting break from the baroque "classical" bullshit. Stockhausen and Cage were *doing* things with sound. Bach was making pretty tunes for nobles.
@BlacknWhitesAlright Bach wrote some essential pieces.For instance, Stockhausen, when talking about Bach, many times mentioned such compositions as Mass in B minor and Goldberg Variations.
You should really read Stockhausen's clarification on his comment. He said that the press had published "false, defamatory reports" about his comments.
I would post it here but it's too long to fit in a youtube comment. It is listed in the "controversy section on Wikipedia.
Be careful not to beleive everything that is written down, there is a lot of slander and overall exaggeration in interviews all for the sake of sensationalism. Of course, his response could just be damage control.
@Dnomasorneiluj The fifty or so years of the New Viennese School is omitted, the more clearly to show the before and after effect of the hiccup which it and it's wake precipitated after more than half a millennium of this tradition.
Do you want to know why composers are being taught to write modern music? Because the time is now, not then. We no longer want to sound like the great composers of times past, we want to sound original. So we do something profound, interesting, and provocative. We are writing for musicians, not publicists and amateurs. Let me leave you with one question, do we encourage scientists, mathematicians, astronomers etc. to spend their time doing something that has already been accomplished?
@AndyYoungrulz - Do we encourage scientists, mathematicians and astronomers to do things which have already been accomplished ? - YES, of course we do. 99% of their work is understanding and applying what has already been accomplished, in order that by standing on the shoulders of giants our consciousness may expand that little bit more. Music and the arts should work in just the same way..
@richtomes Yes, they understand the work of those before them it is the only way to expand consciousness. But it is the application of those processes that make new works as you say. In the first few years of schooling composition students are taught the formal concepts of tonal music. The great German composers are studied for their application of harmony and voice leading, as well as form and melodic/thematic development. I agree that we learn from the old, but we must create new things.
@AndyYoungrulz It's debateable how much much of the new music really does come out of the same place which sustained this great tradition for half a millenium. Debateable how much of the new art comes out of a profound understanding, love and respect for this long tradition, this video was created to provoke that debate..
@richtomes Since you want to debate that, what evidence do you have that it does not come "out of a profound understanding, love and respect for this long tradition"? Since you're open to debate, you must also be open to the possibility that you're wrong... right?
@richtomes I think you also need to consider though that the progression of art over time. Yes great artists employ the same concepts of GOOD art, for instance the sonata-allegro form, the proportions of nature and so on. At some point though it becomes repetition and lacks the emotion and drama that artists are after in creation works.
@AndyYoungrulz Composers are being taught to write original music with their own ideas well presented. If ideas can be well presented as original while being in one or two time signitures exclusively, one harmonic structure exclusively, and 200 year old concepts of form exclusively, then so be it. You could write a novel in the style of Shakespeare. Personally, I'd question its originality or value. But, that's what the commercial arts are for. I wouldn't consider it "Classical" though.
funny he pickes the only work by Sibelius that matters to me. If he can write a grewat violin concerto with so many moments and unity there must be at least an entire movement in one of his 7 symphonies. Corigliano?Carter? feldman,Babitt?,Rorem,? Rochberg,Perle,Bolcolm. Thsi list cantr be taken seriously .Rach andTchaikovsky why ?Schnittke but no Ustvolskaya or Birtwhistle or a hundred others that will always be heard . Lists are maybe just silly.
@InsertName125 My favorite thing about this video is that the likes and dislikes are starting to even up - it started with nothing but negative flags, but as time goes on it's getting closer and closer to 50/50 - how will time judge serial music, 'conceptual' art, musique concrète etc ? Will it continue to be respected on equal terms with Bach Beethoven Brahms and Britten, or will it be seen as an eccentric passing fashion of the day ?
@richtomes Time has already judged serial music. It's a part of the musical canon that isn't going away, whether you like it or not. The fact is that a lot fewer people "like" Mozart than did 50 years ago. A lot fewer people like Classical music in general. Britney Spears' ass will generate more "likes" than Beethoven's pockmarks ANY day. Youtube comments may not be the best place to seek out an answer to your question. I'm just glad that there are so many negatives for this dishonest portrait.
@richtomes Actually, your own comment is very telling. You said that your "favorite thing about this video is that the likes and dislikes are starting to even up". Your favorite thing about YOUR OWN VIDEO involves what other people (on youtube no less) think? An artists' favorite thing would be personal and involve the process of creating the art itself. If that's missing, what's the point. If your sole purpose is to generate thumbs, then you don't understand the function of art at all.
@InsertName125 This video is not a piece of art, (although people today seem to think anything can be art) It's simply a slideshow with music designed to provoke a debate, and it pleases me to find so many thumbs up, despite the fashionability of music which sounds (As André Previn put it) like someone dropped the cutlery, and the political incorrectness of questioning such rubbish.
Personally I find group A closer to the music I appreciate. I might not know or appreciate much classical music, but I do love and understand hugely successful bands like Radiohead, Animal Collective, or Beck. Millions of people love the more radical, extreme versions of metal, punk, dance, electronica, rock. This radicality, power, experimentalism and wildness, (and its huge audience), has long shifted away from the concert hall to elsewhere.
Of course I used the designation "work of art" to mean the work of destruction personified in Lucifer. In the context of my other comments this was unequivocal."
Stockhausen on his comments being taken out of context.
"At the press conference in Hamburg, I was asked if Michael, Eve and Lucifer were historical figures of the past and I answered that they exist now, for example Lucifer in New York. In my work, I have defined Lucifer as the cosmic spirit of rebellion, of anarchy. He uses his high degree of intelligence to destroy creation. He does not know love. After further questions about the events in America, I said that such a plan appeared to be Lucifer's greatest work of art....
The qoute comes from an interview about his super-opera "Licht" in which he was questioned on the importance on his characters - Eve, Michael and Lucifer.
He was referring to the attack as Lucifer's greatest work of art ever.
Excuse me, but you just mix the "sour" with "bland".
Taking the principle a few different schools in Group A, you are as I understand it, not really bother to read the trends of the twentieth century and the writings of many famous composers such as Schnittke.
But there are truly outstanding individuals. For example, Galina Ustvolskaya. She was a pupil of Shostakovich. Before her creativity admired Prokofiev and Shostakovich said: "If i just talented, she is genius".
@NoirSeth7 consider the roots of art - entertainment, inspiration and education, not just for a few insiders with special knowledge but for ordinary human beings.
There's plenty of music being made for "ordinary human beings". So why don't you spend more time listening to rock music and less time worrying about the fact that a small minority actually enjoy modernist music, and have every right to do so.
si no eres capaz de entender la música contemporánea, es un problema tuyo de incultura musical incomprensión de este leguaje.
if you can't understand the contemporary music is a problem of you because of you don't have the musical culture and you can't understand this language
By the way , if you recite that quote into a taperecorder and play it back backwards you will stumble on very extreme hidden messages .....and its even you talking !
The Stockhausen quote you present us is clearly coming from an imaginative mind , that amplifies , reverses , modifies any idea that comes to him.
I don't no wether you actually have an idea about the point you want to make here.
In the case you want to communicate your personal aethetic mindset ....I am not interested.
I doubt wether you ever took the time to even listen with all your concentration to any of his masterpiece , or try to find out which his important works are.
First, you make the age-old mistake of equating "art" with "pleasant".
Second, most of your audience here on YouTube have musical taste that has been raised on American pop music, whose musical content would seem old fashioned and boring to Beethoven. "Their ears" are poor instruments for measuring the kinds of music you've presented.
Third, and that's why music composing students are encouraged to listen to ALL KINDS of music, not just the pretty and pleasant.
We can answer to this question by historical analysis.
The group A composers are in the lineage of Arnold Schoenberg's experimentations with atonality and serialism. He also considered himself as the musical heir of Wagner, Mahler and R. Strauss' music, as they were pushing the tonal system to it's very limits.
Therefore, according to the group A, their music is the legitimate heir to. Then, they were just louder than group B (with people like Boulez and Adorno writing about this music, etc.)
As basically a music outsider, I feel like modern music of type A must be some sort of huge inside joke for people who are knowledgeable about music theory. This is what I conclude from reading so many defenses of the stuff, because I don't doubt the sincerity of people who like it, but at the same time SWEET SLITHERING SNAKES THE MUSIC IS HIDEOUS.
To fully understand what was Stockhausen's point in the paragraph please watch the other clip called "Stockhausen on Human Evolution 1972". These 2 are corelated and show the amazing thing that Stockhousen kept his vision over decades.
But I don't get much the point of posting the group B. What is the parallel to make there? I've got a few thoughts on that, but I won't express them for now, just answer me this question.
As his art, the concept of Stockhausen on 9/11 is completly twisted, degenerate. It's not about educating musicians to be terrorism endorsers, but rather it is exposing someone's perception of things. The main thing here is, why aren't we overcoming the classics? Why do we keep wasting time overrating experimentalism? It IS crucial - don't take me wrong - but I just feel it's being a tool to bring the culural decay of modern-time societies. This video is a bomb and shows things faiirly well.
@richtomes: Thanks so much for this fantastic video! I'm a current university composition student, and the composition faculty at my school is very much the "Group A" type, and there is a definite discouragement to young composers to stay away from "group B" kind of stuff, which is really too bad. I'm one of the few at my school who has held on to what is considered "old fashioned music". I really wish that people could realize that art is not just about what is NEW, but what is BEAUTIFUL.
Stockhausen's opinion of what art is has absolutely nothing to do with his music. You make it seem like students are being brainwashed into terrorists because they study "Kontakte". Music of the 20th century is much more in depth than the black-or-white list of composers you put in this video. You can not and should not discredit the "Group A" composers simply because you don't like it.
This begs a question, and that is whether composition students are told to compose in a particular style. Can you corroborate that? In my experience, they're not told to compose in a particular style.
I would say all the composers listed in the video are great composers. I enjoy at least some of all of their music. Among the group it is clear you despise, I think particularly Nono and Ligeti were unparalleled masters.
@richtomes "Stravinsky only wrote serial music at the very end of his life, and it is not the music which he's celebrated for." "Agon" is pretty acclaimed.
"Serialism is stone cold dead now..." - Prove it.
"Music is entertainment for human beings, not a science experiment." - Says who?
I think that group A is about the "Sublime" and Group B about the "Beautiful". At least from a listeners standpoint, because the methods that sometimes group A uses are Beautiful and vise versa Sometimes Group B methods are Sublime. This is important because Group A has progressed music theory and harmony theory, (a beautiful element, inspite the Sublime result ) so in a Darvinian sense of evolution it seems more relevant. This is one reason for the encouragment of srudents I think. But .....
(continued)..there is another reason: Modernity is very connected to a Sublime esthetic which is considered more relevant. Why? The answer lies in how we define the Sublime. The definition itself has evolved from an emotional quality that expresses transcendence (for example the EPIC or GRAND etc) to a more radical transcendence of FORM to explore TEXTURE.note: Many of the composers in Group B (like Carl Orff) have an "outdated" emotional view of the Sublime,so today are considered "Beautiful".
Art is something made or done to provoke an emotional response in its audience. 9/11 changed the world, and almost a decade later, people still feel very strongly about it. I really can't argue that it wasn't in some way an act of art. Was it good? Of course not, but it was certainly felt, by many, for very long.
This sort of lost me.....if this video was more about what the title suggests. 9/11 as art....it would have made for much more contriversial, and intriguing discussion. This is more what I was expecting...not a comparision between Old and New styles of composing. Its kind of hard to consider the latter when I am still mentally composing what I would say about the former....& which side I would take. Destruction as art has merit...at least as a philosophical discussion. In practice not so much.
with the exception of war requiem, you'll find that all of group B is from the earlier half of the 20th century, you also failed to point out group A composers, Stravinsky and Copland in particular made their most stunning music in the style of Group B. Copland's Connotations is one of the greatest works to come out of this great country and anyone who feels otherwise has not heard it
Now I'm going back to this video to get composers' names to listen to. That many awesome composers all in one place? That makes everything so much easier. Yes, I'm talking about the group A composers, the ones with the 20th century dates by them as an attempt to call them "modernistic" without actually saying it. I do also like some of the group B, mostly Beethoven and Dvorak, but my favorite part of the visual track in this video video must be the part when you covered up the 2003 with a 2001.
In Watchmen Graphic novel, Adrian Veidt a.k.a. Ozymandias likes Stockhausen music and he makes some kind of inside job just like the U.S. goverment in 9/11, but the reason is to avoid a world war or the end of the world by nuclear weapons. Is very interesting that Stockhausen justifies this idiotic maneuver to gain power by the capitalist pigs -warfare and building industries for example- like a work of art.
I think this is a good question posed at the end of the video. My opinion is that Group 8 is much, much more stuctured, harmonically interesting. Group B is'nt even concerned with structure, and in fact thinks its an outdated idea. In my opinion group B is approaching noise, interesting noise possibly, but noise. Composers may be interested in this, but the general public absolutely hates it.
I vote for Xenakis. To my ears, his excerpt was by far the most rich and beautiful. And I should add that the Orffestrated excerpt was the most hackneyed. But had the author been so circumspect as to include an excerpt of Stimmung by Stockhausen, I would probably have voted for him, despite Stockhausen being villified, even posthumously, for simply echoing the same aesthetic that God specifies every moment the universe exists.
Is simple because we are bored of that music and we want something new.
No one can judge what is art or not for the others because is a very personal and particular idea that only works for you. When you are child don’t like the same art when you are old. When you are angry don’t like the same art when you are about die. And when you look into the mirror sometimes don’t like what you see and other times is only happiness.
i'll be the only one who dislike the group A then? I'm a composition student and people say that i'm out of date and looking backward... I hope they are wrong.. i hope there are a few people like me who can enjoy modern music without sounding... crazy... weird... unique... or whatever you wanna call it :D
I've seen a lot of harsch criticism against what Stockhausen said about 9/11, but, personally, I don't think he was justifying the attack, or looking at it as a positive thing: I think his was simply a meditation (still emotionally affected by the shock of what had happened just a few days before) on how little the power of art is, compared to that of destruction, and the analogies between the hard work and preparation behind a performance and those behind a terrorist attack, which are frighten
I think your missing the point, firstly because your question isn't valid. It's a sweeping generalisation to say that everybody is being encouraged to compose "in style A" and it just isn't true. What about all the composers & songwriters creating jazz, pop and rock music, etc.? Not sure what the title of the video and the quote has to do with it either, but if it was to provoke a reaction then you've certainly achieved it.
@richtomes - I don't really see the absence of melody in group A works. I get some of those that I've heard stuck in my head sometimes. You might argue that there are no notes in 4:33 so there can't be melody, but that's only what someone who doesn't understand would say.
@Electrasound - Amish composers? Since when did the Amish use synthesizers? Or even really care about music, at least that isn't from waaay back then?
@richtomes To answer the question you ask at the end of the video: For the same reason you're discouraged from speaking English and encouraged to speak Spanish during Spanish class, it helps you master the elements of a new language. Once you've learned that second language and enriched your vocabulary, you can choose whether you use it or not. The greater the range you have to chose from when trying to convey an idea, the better. Same thing in music.
@cuervodka Spanish class only aims to teach Spanish. In a class which aims to give a broad education in all languages one wouldn't only encourage Spanish to be spoken. As for the question of which is the better music, no opinion is given in the video.
@richtomes I agree with you and I understand what you mean. But my problem with the modern "classical" music runs deeper. There's too many recordings in classical music stores that should no longer qualify as such and must be sold in the Rock section haha. They use very little or no orchestral instruments... Experimental music is what draws a distinctive line here and in a decade less and less orchestral recordings will be made - or composed! One can always "upgrade" Holst to the 21 century :)
@richtomes You can't really compare "Group A" to the composers you mention at the beginning of the video. First of all, there are enormous differences within Group A; like, say, between Stockhausen & Schnittke. But, most importantly, you can't say one is better than the other because they're two completely different languages, just like you can't say portuguese is better is better than french, for example. You can like one more than the other, but not say one is better or worse.
@cuervodka We shouldn't forget that in fact all these composers are working with the same language, or at least, they think they are. That language is called music, and all these composers are considered part of the same music tradition. No opinion about which is the better music is given in the video.
To answer your question, the composers in Group B are all Amish composers (except for Stravinsky who doesn't belong in group B). If you want to be an Amish composer and have no sense of living in the 21st century then start imitating the composers in Group B who were Amish composers. Also, check your dates. The Unanswered Question was written in 1906.
@Electrasound Quite right, thank you - The Unanswered Question 1906, published in 1940. As for the Amish, there were many who told Rachmaninov, Prokoviev, Shostakovich, Walton, Britten, Tippet, Copland, etc the same thing - that they were out of date and looking backward. Thank goodness they didn't listen.
I love those groups!!! they are so different from each other and every composer has his own beauty in his peaces. BUT, what about female composers? Are you so fucking out-of-date?
But if this vid should be a modern composition, i´d love it!
@TeesByTruthSurge I am not even sure what he meant by the quote. It would require more context than a text containing one paragraph for me to make sense of it. Personally, I don't care about the quote. I am more concerned with sounds. And I have been a musician for about that long myself, have a masters in performance and am working on a PhD in musicology. One thing that it has taught me is to be open minded about art and try to understand it rather than judge it - even if it isn't t your taste.
@TeesByTruthSurge I really don't know what else to tell except read the posts. Then if things are unclear, ask another question. To me, there is no "good" and "bad" except what you subjectively deem so. They are merely value judgments. You have to decide these things for yourself.
@TeesByTruthSurge How about going back and reading? But if I must spoon feed I will. I am not claiming anyone is "good" or "bad" for, such binary distinctions are for those who wish to oversimplify the world or gain power somehow. My point to you is that you cannot take one source as the end-all when making a decision about Stockhausen's music. Clearly this poster has an agenda. If I were you, I would give Stockhausen more of a chance before making your mind up based on this video. Clear?
Do you really think Stockhausen has the right to speak for all the composers in group A ?? Do you think that e.g. G Ligeti, who has lost several family-members in the holocaust, would have agreed with this silly, idiotic and self-uplifting quote ? Unpleasantly disturbed is what i call it. Stick to the helicopters, Karlheinz, that 's already enough sillyness.
I can't really dismiss anything from this list. Most of the pieces here are either beautiful, daring, inspiring, interesting or fascinating in one sense or another. Or well, Cage is misrepresented here. 4:33 is not a compositional style but more a kind of statement that tells us to also listen to the silence. Cage was very diverse and daring throughout his whole life. And why shouldn't he be? "I can't understand why people are frightened of new ideas. I'm frightened of the old ones." - John Cage
lindmusik 2 weeks ago
harry partch once said he spent a great deal of time looking for truth. after that great deal of time he said that there are many truths. his work was reflective of his time. if we had the luxury of composing everything that reflected our time and our concept of truth, no matter how ugly or wonderul that truth may be in our time, how would each piece be received?
iantoau 3 weeks ago
I see you dislike musical evolution, so I wanted to say something about that: If there wasn't musical evolution all we would have right now would be monodic chants and some primitive instruments. So learn something about music and its history before posting a video like this, as you clearly can't notice the gigantic leap between Bach and Ravel, and I don't think you know much about music before Bach.
PS: No one can force anybody to compose in one manner or another.
Mellamopableras 1 month ago 2
Well the answer to your question is that we are not pushed in either direction, or at least I was not. I was encouraged to pick and choose from the elements of whatever period I liked, to learn from what I loved to disregard what I disliked. The beauty of the period we are in now is that we can be who we want to be, ears have been trained to appreciate extreme levels of dissonance knowing that a less dissonant passage or consonant passage will bring us greater joy in the grander scheme.
alexbericheath 2 months ago 2
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unTeTra2 2 months ago
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unTeTra2 2 months ago
Think outside the box dude. All of these are composers in their own right. It's called EVOLUTION. You're probably pro-monarchy and a creationist too. OPEN YOUR MIND!
dsteffey77 2 months ago 7
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@dsteffey77 Not everything 'outside the box' is of interest. You're correct however ! I am pro monarchy, and a 'creationist'. But I don't believe in anything just 'because' - I have very good reasons for the things I believe.
richtomes 2 months ago
lol @ John Cage
schzx 3 months ago 3
I tick the all of the above box ^_^
Instrumentals4Sale 3 months ago
I enjoy composers in both groups.
Skybuddies 3 months ago
Art is a reflection of the human spirit through a medium. If 9/11 was art than I have lost hope in humanity.
Imbetterthanmost 3 months ago
What Aaron Copland piece was that?
headnodic 3 months ago
@headnodic Appalachian Spring.
romanticeralover 3 months ago
While innovation is good, it doesn't mean that just because a song is unique it's good. Art isn't just pure innovation, it's innovation that makes you feel something. That's the problem that I see with a lot of modern art.
Unnamed0909 3 months ago
@Unnamed0909 it's not just innovation, it's innovation with sense, you can innovate on two ways, changing the proces to achive something or achiving something new, this people try to do bouth things, and it's beautiful. lets remember that people like you said that beethoven's grosse fugue was no music, the parameters are always growing =) (sorry for my english =))
homerosalazar 3 months ago
You lost me after Poulenc
lineaist 3 months ago
I love how much more intelligent (on average) the comments are for this video than most others on youtube. This is no ordinary debate! Amazing!
JohnIsNot43 4 months ago 3
A lot of brilliant minds presented here--I think WW I was a game changer..in a cuppla decades we went from rural, romantic music depicting nature and great heroic struggles. Then around 1900 came cars, airplanes, lights, Freud, radio, E=MC2, machine guns, recordings, photographs and industrial warfare. Things were more impersonal and some composers depicted dark, violent, culture-shock modes of sound. The composer was "above" society with no constituency anymore so the music sounds like nothing.
radiokid2 4 months ago
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TheDavid2222 4 months ago
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TheDavid2222 4 months ago
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1. This was and excellent video...The 20th century has been a time of unprecedented technical and scientific achievements...many of which are completely devoid of God and Spirit...Although I am not saying the composers of the first group are devoid of God and Spirit, their work reflects the consciousness of the chaotic upheaval that atomic warfare, remote neural monitoring and genetic engineering have brought to humanity.
JuanLorenZerimar 4 months ago
2. As more people turn inwardly to Spirit as a means of stabilization from the ever growing demands of technology on the psyche, the more harmonious music compositions will begin to be sought and valued again by the artistic elite as it will be a more accurate reflection of the mass consciousness. Just as a note, some of the composers of the first group have produced quite stunning and deep pieces such as Ligeti’s Lux Aeterna. Peace, love and light!
JuanLorenZerimar 4 months ago
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JuanLorenZerimar 4 months ago
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JuanLorenZerimar 4 months ago
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JuanLorenZerimar 4 months ago
Can someone tell the title of that brahms ? Thx a lot
ToutexM 5 months ago
All this video did for me was give information on the composers, excellent! :D
Jshaw1ful 6 months ago
And by the by, to those who say just let composers do what they prefer, the conservatoire system only promotes 'atonal' avantgardism. .Or tonal music with a cheap novelty. Just look at their 'professors'. This is why all the connoisseurs have retreated into appreciating those such as Beethoven and Bach better.
SirSwerling 6 months ago
I do dislike the modern 'conservative' composers who write their 'music' in a tasteless and second-rate tonal manner, very often unpleasantly stealing from greater musicians, but the musical 'progressives' are very often tenth-rate artists who have the right connections or get lucky doing something absurd and worthless. As fun as special effects are, why should one go to a concert? That is why I have turned to a method of microtonal scales which preserve the musicality of the tonal system...
SirSwerling 6 months ago 7
@SirSwerling an interesting comment about stealing, because 'stealing' has always been a recognized and respectable part of this great tradition. As quoted by O.Wilde 'Talent imitates, genius steals'. Though innovation is useful it is not at all the main event. The art tradition has always taken the best ideas of the past and re-issued them in different forms, respecting the original and in this way each time adding new dimensions and making the greatest achievements accessible to new audiences.
richtomes 6 months ago
@richtomes I meant in the tasteless sense. All the big film composers for example, Horner, who just does the same score over and over with the Rach motif, Zimmer, who steals from actual music and even has a team to steal for him and even Williams, though everyone seems to have a special soft spot for him. He's stolen grotesque amounts boorishly. Your point is that synthesizing the great events of the past into new music is a good thing..
SirSwerling 6 months ago
@SirSwerling ...and I agree when then properly but when you take a piece exactly and change the key and time signature from common time to 7/8 just to give it a very slight novelty feel, that is not progress.
SirSwerling 6 months ago
En efecto el arte es una celebración, un ritual a nuestros antepasados, pero no todos provenimos de la misma tradición. Puedo disfrutar de ambos grupos de compositores y ninguno es mejor que el otro.
Por otro lado, ¿Qué hay de malo en tomar el 9-11 como una obra de arte, no es acaso parte del mismo ritual, la celebración de la especie humana? ¿o el juicio es por la muerte?, ¿pero cuántos esclavos tuvieron que morir para construir una sola de las 7 maravillas del mundo, entonces eso no es arte?
nellycervantes 5 months ago
Things changed so radically because of the war and globalisation. The art of group A was necessary and inevitable. Not all of it is nice, but all of it is important!
lostpianist 6 months ago
It's a good video. Um, Stockhausen was the coolest.
deadsnoopy1 6 months ago
Despite not being born beyond the 1920's, I think Francesco Balilla Pratella and Luigi Russolo, among other Futurist composers, are (stylistically) a noteworthy mention for Group A. Their experimental compositions tie in with the principles advocated by the composers mentioned in Group A, only they proceed their concepts by a few decades, which could class them as influential to a number of Group A composers.
PabzGLRP 6 months ago
I liked hearing the selections but you left out some that would have shown more historical continuity with group A -- e.g,, the atonalists; Varese
harawitz 6 months ago
@NoirSeth7 I think it's only fair to give equal representation to the 20th century traditionalists as well as to the post-NVS 'dropped cutlery' department, as André Previn put it, and it's interesting to hear them in parallel. I think it's worth remembering that even when a certain movement started preaching that there was nothing meaningful left to say with tonalism and melody, countless 20th century geniuses proved them wrong.
richtomes 6 months ago
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I liked the video. I think a lot of group A composers are great living examples of the emperor´s new clothes... One thing that is not quite fair in the way you categorize the composers, everyone in list A was born AFTER 1920 (except John Cage). In List B almost everyone was born right at the turn of the century over 20 years earlier on average. Something important happened in those 20 years that changed. Called the 2nd Vienese School which included Webern, Schoenberg and Berg amongst others.
NLMF2011 6 months ago
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@NLMF2011 I omitted the 2nd Viennese School deliberately to show the before and after effect. 20 years in a 500+ year old tradition is almost nothing. Consider the gap between Haydn and Mozart, or between Beethoven and Schubert. So when I see a change take place in so short a time which is so radical that the new style bears no resemblance whatsoever to what has gone before, I'm inclined to think that what has taken place is not really the true continuation of the lineage.
richtomes 6 months ago
@richtomes But wait! You are making a point without considering the big picture. When looking at the entire spectrum of life as it relates to TIME itself One cannot help but question your point. Let me ask you to consider this...maybe the 20 years between Hayden+Mozart developed as they did because the temporal reality in which they lived only allowed for that much progress. TIME itself is different in the 20th cent. 20 years? Our evolution moves at a different pace ETC.
shamikami 4 months ago 2
@richtomes comment continued... Although to be fair, I have to say the difference between A and B group is glaringly obvious. If it were up to me I personally would not consider Stockhausen as the "Mozart" of the 20th cent. ETC. ETC. but rather as a representative of an entirely new and for the most part unrelated way of thinking, approaching, and executing the very idea of what MUSIC is. To me that is the point...making your comparison somewhat silly in my opinion.
shamikami 4 months ago
@richtomes i prefer groupe A
inadvertance1989 3 months ago 3
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composition students are encouraged to compose in whatever style they want...
Shredlord12345 6 months ago
Comp student speaking. Your "Group A" composers are a group with vastly different compositional styles and, I suspect, philosophies and ideologies. You've cast post-tonal music as tyrannical, disgusting, and unartistic. You've misrepresented entire schools of thought. The historical development behind the styles of Xenakis, Cage and Stockhausen is extremely important to understanding their music. You've done anyone interested in 20th- and 21st-century music a disservice.
SirTwitchyferr 6 months ago 40
@SirTwitchyferr The historical development behind any composer's style is important to understanding their music, but this is just a slideshow of composers accompanied by short clips of their own music. Sometimes it's better to just let your ears do the appreciation.
richtomes 6 months ago
@SirTwitchyferr I agree, the person who made this video is making an uninformed appeal to emotions.
79898325 4 months ago
@SirTwitchyferr One should be able to simply LISTEN to a piece of music without having to "understand the historical development". Do I have to understand the historical development Carmina Burana to appreciate it? HELL NO. I'm a music major as well and I say a piece of music should connect with the listener outside of the library and in the concert hall! I do believe that a recognizable rhythm is essential for a piece. These atonal pieces don't have rhythm at all. Rhythm is the foundation.
TheDavid2222 4 months ago
@TheDavid2222 Uh, its called atonal, not arhythm. Also you obviously don't even understand what rhythm is, saying things like that. Besides, if you don't instantly appreciate a work on first hearing, it doesn't automatically mean there is something wrong with the work. Maybe you've never heard anything like it before, or you don't know what to listen for, what interesting things you should register. People shouldn't always need instant gratification when enjoying art.
DarkZekeX 2 months ago
I feel like you misrepresented Cage, but as a whole, this video articulated exactly what I feel. Thanks.
SenorCyprian 6 months ago
Let my ear judge....
ok i appreciate all of the composers here listed
but i personally prefer those in group A far more than those in group B
and i suppose this kind of grouping is just according to your own perceptions right?
calkingjames 6 months ago
Anyone here likes both Group A and Group B??? I'd consider Stravinsky as a big influence in Group A too, and Cage itself is not that far apart from Stravinsky. I actually like Stockhausen and Cage a lot, but I also love guys like Stravinsky, Britten and, especially Rodrigo.
rodcrippler 7 months ago
By the way, he referred to 9/11 as LUCIFER's greatest work of art. It was put out of context, but he was never explicitly clear anyways, right?
rodcrippler 7 months ago
Nice collection, that was very educational.
NicoBattersby 7 months ago
My answer to the question posed in this video: It is never easy to break from the past, however there will come a time when the past will have no relevance and will gently fade away. Slowly but surely we are heading in this direction.
guitarphunk 7 months ago
@guitarphunk - The past is always relevant
richtomes 6 months ago
Great selection, beautiful music. Thanks.
rob001001 7 months ago
The "group A" composers (like other groups) ARE few of the most intuitive and innovative artists of the XX century. The judge of Stockhausen about 9/11 was misunderstanded, and in a artistic and avantgardistic contest it HAD a deep meaning !!! Than U've missing many colossal composers like Denisov or GUBAIDULINA ...
HerzenvonDaelia 7 months ago
Karlheinz Stockhausen and all the others in this vid are the terrorists of music.
isaak74 7 months ago
some people -and some artist- are able to see even is own disgrace as a part of a whole -the life, the universe- rather than just conplaining or feel sorry for it, think on the greek tragedy for example. a great disgrace might be then, a great part of the life, wich is in what the art is ispired by the end. maybe that was what Stockhausen meant to say.
by the way, i read somewhere else a part of this same declaration "It is a crime, you know of course, because the people did not agree to it."
aeropajita 8 months ago
А ТЕПЕРЬ ПО РУССКИ НАПИШИТЕ - ЧТО ЭТО ВООБЩЕ. НО МУЗЫКА ЗВУЧИТ ХОРОШАЯ.
SergeyHod 8 months ago
Don't see the point in trying to categorize things like that. Further more your chosen pieces by barber and orff aren't really a good representation of the overall character of the bulk of their works.
pocoapoco2 8 months ago 2
Of all the quite large number of better known composers you can find one that will fit in any slot in a continuum from the most distorted to the most tame-mainstream Schaffer/Henry, Scelsi, Ives, Alwynn, Hartley, Bax, Williams. Even among the composers that you list you can find pieces by them that you would fit in either your A group or your B group. Both Stravinsky and Copland wrote serial pieces. Schnitke wrote a few conservative pieces.
pocoapoco2 8 months ago
"Music is entertainment for human beings, not a science experiment." - Says who?
Says Sta Cecilia
richtomes 8 months ago
@richtomes Science is art by itself!! The same way music, painting or sculpture can be both mass-appealing as introspective, it all relies on the eye of the beholder. I personally find really entertaining some really weird compositions by contemporary composers.
rodcrippler 7 months ago
GROUP B!!! This is an amazing video!!!!
83songsandcounting 8 months ago
My ears judged, and decided that the modern material was a merciful and formally interesting break from the baroque "classical" bullshit. Stockhausen and Cage were *doing* things with sound. Bach was making pretty tunes for nobles.
BlacknWhitesAlright 8 months ago
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LesbianStraightGay 8 months ago
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@BlacknWhitesAlright Bach wrote some essential pieces.For instance, Stockhausen, when talking about Bach, many times mentioned such compositions as Mass in B minor and Goldberg Variations.
LesbianStraightGay 8 months ago
You should really read Stockhausen's clarification on his comment. He said that the press had published "false, defamatory reports" about his comments.
I would post it here but it's too long to fit in a youtube comment. It is listed in the "controversy section on Wikipedia.
Be careful not to beleive everything that is written down, there is a lot of slander and overall exaggeration in interviews all for the sake of sensationalism. Of course, his response could just be damage control.
IamZanderss 9 months ago 2
What is the name of the music of Maurice Ravel that appears in this video?
1987filipeson 9 months ago
The work of the Trinity is one (if it's not the) of the greatest headway of the music.
After them we can't go back in the past and make nices melodies whith a harmony who respect The V | I
For me the composer now need to know perfectly the theory (H,CP,A...), the history...but his work can't go against the evolution.
Or you make popular music
Dnomasorneiluj 9 months ago
@Dnomasorneiluj The fifty or so years of the New Viennese School is omitted, the more clearly to show the before and after effect of the hiccup which it and it's wake precipitated after more than half a millennium of this tradition.
richtomes 9 months ago
I didn't see Arvo Pärt listed. That is quite an error.
88BMP 9 months ago
@88BMP Arvo Pärt is still living - this video only deals with deceased composers
richtomes 9 months ago
@richtomes In that case, you forgot Igor Stravinsky, Edgard Varese, Bela Bartok, and Frank Zappa.
PsytranceMan777 7 months ago
@richtomes Whoops, just realized Stravinsky's in there. Silly me!
PsytranceMan777 7 months ago
Do you want to know why composers are being taught to write modern music? Because the time is now, not then. We no longer want to sound like the great composers of times past, we want to sound original. So we do something profound, interesting, and provocative. We are writing for musicians, not publicists and amateurs. Let me leave you with one question, do we encourage scientists, mathematicians, astronomers etc. to spend their time doing something that has already been accomplished?
AndyYoungrulz 9 months ago
@AndyYoungrulz - Do we encourage scientists, mathematicians and astronomers to do things which have already been accomplished ? - YES, of course we do. 99% of their work is understanding and applying what has already been accomplished, in order that by standing on the shoulders of giants our consciousness may expand that little bit more. Music and the arts should work in just the same way..
richtomes 9 months ago
@richtomes Yes, they understand the work of those before them it is the only way to expand consciousness. But it is the application of those processes that make new works as you say. In the first few years of schooling composition students are taught the formal concepts of tonal music. The great German composers are studied for their application of harmony and voice leading, as well as form and melodic/thematic development. I agree that we learn from the old, but we must create new things.
AndyYoungrulz 9 months ago
@AndyYoungrulz It's debateable how much much of the new music really does come out of the same place which sustained this great tradition for half a millenium. Debateable how much of the new art comes out of a profound understanding, love and respect for this long tradition, this video was created to provoke that debate..
richtomes 9 months ago
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@richtomes Since you want to debate that, what evidence do you have that it does not come "out of a profound understanding, love and respect for this long tradition"? Since you're open to debate, you must also be open to the possibility that you're wrong... right?
InsertName125 9 months ago
@richtomes I think you also need to consider though that the progression of art over time. Yes great artists employ the same concepts of GOOD art, for instance the sonata-allegro form, the proportions of nature and so on. At some point though it becomes repetition and lacks the emotion and drama that artists are after in creation works.
AndyYoungrulz 9 months ago
@AndyYoungrulz People were certainly telling Britten, Bernstein and Shostakovich what you have just said - thank goodness they didn't listen.
richtomes 9 months ago
@AndyYoungrulz Composers are being taught to write original music with their own ideas well presented. If ideas can be well presented as original while being in one or two time signitures exclusively, one harmonic structure exclusively, and 200 year old concepts of form exclusively, then so be it. You could write a novel in the style of Shakespeare. Personally, I'd question its originality or value. But, that's what the commercial arts are for. I wouldn't consider it "Classical" though.
InsertName125 9 months ago
This is patent nonsense.
chestnuttreecaf3 9 months ago
funny he pickes the only work by Sibelius that matters to me. If he can write a grewat violin concerto with so many moments and unity there must be at least an entire movement in one of his 7 symphonies. Corigliano?Carter? feldman,Babitt?,Rorem,? Rochberg,Perle,Bolcolm. Thsi list cantr be taken seriously .Rach andTchaikovsky why ?Schnittke but no Ustvolskaya or Birtwhistle or a hundred others that will always be heard . Lists are maybe just silly.
lovesGenet 10 months ago
My favorite thing about this video is the fact that it has received so many "dislikes".
Another "unanswered question" might be how the person behind the video could speak for all of us with such an unfavorable rating.
InsertName125 10 months ago
@InsertName125 My favorite thing about this video is that the likes and dislikes are starting to even up - it started with nothing but negative flags, but as time goes on it's getting closer and closer to 50/50 - how will time judge serial music, 'conceptual' art, musique concrète etc ? Will it continue to be respected on equal terms with Bach Beethoven Brahms and Britten, or will it be seen as an eccentric passing fashion of the day ?
richtomes 9 months ago
@richtomes Time has already judged serial music. It's a part of the musical canon that isn't going away, whether you like it or not. The fact is that a lot fewer people "like" Mozart than did 50 years ago. A lot fewer people like Classical music in general. Britney Spears' ass will generate more "likes" than Beethoven's pockmarks ANY day. Youtube comments may not be the best place to seek out an answer to your question. I'm just glad that there are so many negatives for this dishonest portrait.
InsertName125 9 months ago
@richtomes Actually, your own comment is very telling. You said that your "favorite thing about this video is that the likes and dislikes are starting to even up". Your favorite thing about YOUR OWN VIDEO involves what other people (on youtube no less) think? An artists' favorite thing would be personal and involve the process of creating the art itself. If that's missing, what's the point. If your sole purpose is to generate thumbs, then you don't understand the function of art at all.
InsertName125 9 months ago
@InsertName125 This video is not a piece of art, (although people today seem to think anything can be art) It's simply a slideshow with music designed to provoke a debate, and it pleases me to find so many thumbs up, despite the fashionability of music which sounds (As André Previn put it) like someone dropped the cutlery, and the political incorrectness of questioning such rubbish.
richtomes 9 months ago
@richtomes Everything is art so anything CAN be art because LIFE IS ART
chrishove123 9 months ago
Personally I find group A closer to the music I appreciate. I might not know or appreciate much classical music, but I do love and understand hugely successful bands like Radiohead, Animal Collective, or Beck. Millions of people love the more radical, extreme versions of metal, punk, dance, electronica, rock. This radicality, power, experimentalism and wildness, (and its huge audience), has long shifted away from the concert hall to elsewhere.
TheStigli 10 months ago
Of course I used the designation "work of art" to mean the work of destruction personified in Lucifer. In the context of my other comments this was unequivocal."
Stockhausen on his comments being taken out of context.
Nightwatchman2792796 10 months ago
"At the press conference in Hamburg, I was asked if Michael, Eve and Lucifer were historical figures of the past and I answered that they exist now, for example Lucifer in New York. In my work, I have defined Lucifer as the cosmic spirit of rebellion, of anarchy. He uses his high degree of intelligence to destroy creation. He does not know love. After further questions about the events in America, I said that such a plan appeared to be Lucifer's greatest work of art....
Nightwatchman2792796 10 months ago
Wow! Way to take a qoute out of context.
The qoute comes from an interview about his super-opera "Licht" in which he was questioned on the importance on his characters - Eve, Michael and Lucifer.
He was referring to the attack as Lucifer's greatest work of art ever.
BennyChaotik 10 months ago
I'm a composition student, and my language is closer to group B, and my teacher was Stockhausen's assistant...
And why isn't Boulez here? he's as important as Stockhausen, and obviously more important than Nono for example
goncalocurto 10 months ago
@goncalocurto Pierre Boulez isn't here because he isn't dead. You have to be dead to get on here.
richtomes 10 months ago
@richtomes Well, as a composer he is, he hasn't composed since 1992 i think
goncalocurto 10 months ago
yes, Stockhausen is an idiot, but no need to condemn others
aicos1424katsu 10 months ago
To put the case for Cage, listen to In a Landscape.
Phobia017 10 months ago
That brahms piece is lovely. Also, so so so much rage going on here. Lighten up everyone!
Phobia017 10 months ago
Excuse me, but you just mix the "sour" with "bland".
Taking the principle a few different schools in Group A, you are as I understand it, not really bother to read the trends of the twentieth century and the writings of many famous composers such as Schnittke.
But there are truly outstanding individuals. For example, Galina Ustvolskaya. She was a pupil of Shostakovich. Before her creativity admired Prokofiev and Shostakovich said: "If i just talented, she is genius".
Quatarsys 10 months ago
Why are modern composition students encouraged to compose in certain stile????
Let them compose free as they feel their art!
sztakicsisti 11 months ago
these groupings are totally arbitrary, and one could easily like any or all composers from either group, plus the some of the many you have omitted
petezilla 11 months ago
Karlheinz Stockhausen also said: "It's a crime because the people were not consenting. They
haven't come to the 'concert'. This is evident. And nobody had announced
them that they could die in its process. What happened there
spiritually, this leap from security, from what's ordinary, from life,
that sometimes happens poco a poco in art. Or else it is nothing."
omargk 11 months ago
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omargk 11 months ago
I have always thought that 9/11 was a masterpiece of terror, and in that sense a major one-act work of art. Its genre, horror.
borombon 11 months ago
@NoirSeth7 consider the roots of art - entertainment, inspiration and education, not just for a few insiders with special knowledge but for ordinary human beings.
richtomes 11 months ago
@richtomes Die mr ricthomes, die! *BANG, BANG*
TheRiteOfWinter 10 months ago
@TheRiteOfWinter - would it be art ?
richtomes 10 months ago
@richtomes
There's plenty of music being made for "ordinary human beings". So why don't you spend more time listening to rock music and less time worrying about the fact that a small minority actually enjoy modernist music, and have every right to do so.
Nightwatchman2792796 10 months ago
si no eres capaz de entender la música contemporánea, es un problema tuyo de incultura musical incomprensión de este leguaje.
if you can't understand the contemporary music is a problem of you because of you don't have the musical culture and you can't understand this language
rentaparabrisas 11 months ago
You dont know music, the student choose the style not his teacher.
No conoces de música, el estudiante decide su estilo no su maestro.
lasagradabiblia 11 months ago
By the way , if you recite that quote into a taperecorder and play it back backwards you will stumble on very extreme hidden messages .....and its even you talking !
FenderRhodesService 11 months ago
sorry ....aesthetic.......
FenderRhodesService 11 months ago
The Stockhausen quote you present us is clearly coming from an imaginative mind , that amplifies , reverses , modifies any idea that comes to him.
I don't no wether you actually have an idea about the point you want to make here.
In the case you want to communicate your personal aethetic mindset ....I am not interested.
I doubt wether you ever took the time to even listen with all your concentration to any of his masterpiece , or try to find out which his important works are.
FenderRhodesService 11 months ago
richtomes,
First, you make the age-old mistake of equating "art" with "pleasant".
Second, most of your audience here on YouTube have musical taste that has been raised on American pop music, whose musical content would seem old fashioned and boring to Beethoven. "Their ears" are poor instruments for measuring the kinds of music you've presented.
Third, and that's why music composing students are encouraged to listen to ALL KINDS of music, not just the pretty and pleasant.
ec52556 1 year ago 2
Does anyone else see a similarity between this situation and the War of the Romantics in the previous century?
Maybe both approaches will be lauded in hindsight.
fuzzyfawsitt 1 year ago
We can answer to this question by historical analysis.
The group A composers are in the lineage of Arnold Schoenberg's experimentations with atonality and serialism. He also considered himself as the musical heir of Wagner, Mahler and R. Strauss' music, as they were pushing the tonal system to it's very limits.
Therefore, according to the group A, their music is the legitimate heir to. Then, they were just louder than group B (with people like Boulez and Adorno writing about this music, etc.)
xSenorGx 1 year ago
As basically a music outsider, I feel like modern music of type A must be some sort of huge inside joke for people who are knowledgeable about music theory. This is what I conclude from reading so many defenses of the stuff, because I don't doubt the sincerity of people who like it, but at the same time SWEET SLITHERING SNAKES THE MUSIC IS HIDEOUS.
simplic1000 1 year ago
To fully understand what was Stockhausen's point in the paragraph please watch the other clip called "Stockhausen on Human Evolution 1972". These 2 are corelated and show the amazing thing that Stockhousen kept his vision over decades.
DrLux 1 year ago
But I don't get much the point of posting the group B. What is the parallel to make there? I've got a few thoughts on that, but I won't express them for now, just answer me this question.
HeiligZorn 1 year ago
As his art, the concept of Stockhausen on 9/11 is completly twisted, degenerate. It's not about educating musicians to be terrorism endorsers, but rather it is exposing someone's perception of things. The main thing here is, why aren't we overcoming the classics? Why do we keep wasting time overrating experimentalism? It IS crucial - don't take me wrong - but I just feel it's being a tool to bring the culural decay of modern-time societies. This video is a bomb and shows things faiirly well.
HeiligZorn 1 year ago
@richtomes: Thanks so much for this fantastic video! I'm a current university composition student, and the composition faculty at my school is very much the "Group A" type, and there is a definite discouragement to young composers to stay away from "group B" kind of stuff, which is really too bad. I'm one of the few at my school who has held on to what is considered "old fashioned music". I really wish that people could realize that art is not just about what is NEW, but what is BEAUTIFUL.
conorconnor 1 year ago
Stockhausen's opinion of what art is has absolutely nothing to do with his music. You make it seem like students are being brainwashed into terrorists because they study "Kontakte". Music of the 20th century is much more in depth than the black-or-white list of composers you put in this video. You can not and should not discredit the "Group A" composers simply because you don't like it.
Wex1117 1 year ago
The final question seems something of a non sequitur following on from the Stockhausen quote about the Twin Towers.
sptfgpn 1 year ago
This begs a question, and that is whether composition students are told to compose in a particular style. Can you corroborate that? In my experience, they're not told to compose in a particular style.
I would say all the composers listed in the video are great composers. I enjoy at least some of all of their music. Among the group it is clear you despise, I think particularly Nono and Ligeti were unparalleled masters.
fiandrhi 1 year ago 2
@richtomes "Stravinsky only wrote serial music at the very end of his life, and it is not the music which he's celebrated for." "Agon" is pretty acclaimed.
"Serialism is stone cold dead now..." - Prove it.
"Music is entertainment for human beings, not a science experiment." - Says who?
adamspektorable 1 year ago 15
@adamspektorable says Saint Cecilia
richtomes 1 year ago
@adamspektorable Says St Cecilia
richtomes 9 months ago
I think that group A is about the "Sublime" and Group B about the "Beautiful". At least from a listeners standpoint, because the methods that sometimes group A uses are Beautiful and vise versa Sometimes Group B methods are Sublime. This is important because Group A has progressed music theory and harmony theory, (a beautiful element, inspite the Sublime result ) so in a Darvinian sense of evolution it seems more relevant. This is one reason for the encouragment of srudents I think. But .....
MYGAS21 1 year ago
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MYGAS21 1 year ago
(continued)..there is another reason: Modernity is very connected to a Sublime esthetic which is considered more relevant. Why? The answer lies in how we define the Sublime. The definition itself has evolved from an emotional quality that expresses transcendence (for example the EPIC or GRAND etc) to a more radical transcendence of FORM to explore TEXTURE.note: Many of the composers in Group B (like Carl Orff) have an "outdated" emotional view of the Sublime,so today are considered "Beautiful".
MYGAS21 1 year ago
Art is something made or done to provoke an emotional response in its audience. 9/11 changed the world, and almost a decade later, people still feel very strongly about it. I really can't argue that it wasn't in some way an act of art. Was it good? Of course not, but it was certainly felt, by many, for very long.
dojomojomofo 1 year ago
This sort of lost me.....if this video was more about what the title suggests. 9/11 as art....it would have made for much more contriversial, and intriguing discussion. This is more what I was expecting...not a comparision between Old and New styles of composing. Its kind of hard to consider the latter when I am still mentally composing what I would say about the former....& which side I would take. Destruction as art has merit...at least as a philosophical discussion. In practice not so much.
frankensteinmoneymac 1 year ago
304 nazis
PreseditaBrinkmann 1 year ago
with the exception of war requiem, you'll find that all of group B is from the earlier half of the 20th century, you also failed to point out group A composers, Stravinsky and Copland in particular made their most stunning music in the style of Group B. Copland's Connotations is one of the greatest works to come out of this great country and anyone who feels otherwise has not heard it
cnmaster01 1 year ago
Now I'm going back to this video to get composers' names to listen to. That many awesome composers all in one place? That makes everything so much easier. Yes, I'm talking about the group A composers, the ones with the 20th century dates by them as an attempt to call them "modernistic" without actually saying it. I do also like some of the group B, mostly Beethoven and Dvorak, but my favorite part of the visual track in this video video must be the part when you covered up the 2003 with a 2001.
AyumuVanguard 1 year ago
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AyumuVanguard 1 year ago
In Watchmen Graphic novel, Adrian Veidt a.k.a. Ozymandias likes Stockhausen music and he makes some kind of inside job just like the U.S. goverment in 9/11, but the reason is to avoid a world war or the end of the world by nuclear weapons. Is very interesting that Stockhausen justifies this idiotic maneuver to gain power by the capitalist pigs -warfare and building industries for example- like a work of art.
bassuan 1 year ago
@bassuan you weren't all that clear so correct me if i'm wrong, but did you just imply that Stockhausen was involved in a 9/11 conspiracy?
cnmaster01 1 year ago
I think this is a good question posed at the end of the video. My opinion is that Group 8 is much, much more stuctured, harmonically interesting. Group B is'nt even concerned with structure, and in fact thinks its an outdated idea. In my opinion group B is approaching noise, interesting noise possibly, but noise. Composers may be interested in this, but the general public absolutely hates it.
Andronicus2007 1 year ago
I vote for Xenakis. To my ears, his excerpt was by far the most rich and beautiful. And I should add that the Orffestrated excerpt was the most hackneyed. But had the author been so circumspect as to include an excerpt of Stimmung by Stockhausen, I would probably have voted for him, despite Stockhausen being villified, even posthumously, for simply echoing the same aesthetic that God specifies every moment the universe exists.
spaydar 1 year ago 3
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spaydar 1 year ago
EUROPE IS NOT THE CENTER OF HUMAN KIND!! GO LOOK FOR ALL KINDS OF ARTS AROUND THE G L O B E !!!!
TiccoFernandes 1 year ago
Is simple because we are bored of that music and we want something new.
No one can judge what is art or not for the others because is a very personal and particular idea that only works for you. When you are child don’t like the same art when you are old. When you are angry don’t like the same art when you are about die. And when you look into the mirror sometimes don’t like what you see and other times is only happiness.
jorindeadeye 1 year ago
i'll be the only one who dislike the group A then? I'm a composition student and people say that i'm out of date and looking backward... I hope they are wrong.. i hope there are a few people like me who can enjoy modern music without sounding... crazy... weird... unique... or whatever you wanna call it :D
BaRToLoMaSi 1 year ago
I've seen a lot of harsch criticism against what Stockhausen said about 9/11, but, personally, I don't think he was justifying the attack, or looking at it as a positive thing: I think his was simply a meditation (still emotionally affected by the shock of what had happened just a few days before) on how little the power of art is, compared to that of destruction, and the analogies between the hard work and preparation behind a performance and those behind a terrorist attack, which are frighten
Thrash0Jazz0Assassin 1 year ago
I think your missing the point, firstly because your question isn't valid. It's a sweeping generalisation to say that everybody is being encouraged to compose "in style A" and it just isn't true. What about all the composers & songwriters creating jazz, pop and rock music, etc.? Not sure what the title of the video and the quote has to do with it either, but if it was to provoke a reaction then you've certainly achieved it.
MrGanderson87 1 year ago
The outrageous statement is one of the favorite mediums of the modern artist!
They're just showing off and trying to grab attention. ie talking bullshit. It's getting old, it's almost quaint.
Whelouski 1 year ago
I am encouraged to seek out Nono and Ligeti. Thank you. And Shostakovich sounds like good movie music.
abstractcollector2 1 year ago
This has been flagged as spam show
@richtomes - I don't really see the absence of melody in group A works. I get some of those that I've heard stuck in my head sometimes. You might argue that there are no notes in 4:33 so there can't be melody, but that's only what someone who doesn't understand would say.
@Electrasound - Amish composers? Since when did the Amish use synthesizers? Or even really care about music, at least that isn't from waaay back then?
AyumuVanguard 1 year ago
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AyumuVanguard 1 year ago
@richtomes To answer the question you ask at the end of the video: For the same reason you're discouraged from speaking English and encouraged to speak Spanish during Spanish class, it helps you master the elements of a new language. Once you've learned that second language and enriched your vocabulary, you can choose whether you use it or not. The greater the range you have to chose from when trying to convey an idea, the better. Same thing in music.
cuervodka 1 year ago
@cuervodka Spanish class only aims to teach Spanish. In a class which aims to give a broad education in all languages one wouldn't only encourage Spanish to be spoken. As for the question of which is the better music, no opinion is given in the video.
richtomes 1 year ago
@richtomes I agree with you and I understand what you mean. But my problem with the modern "classical" music runs deeper. There's too many recordings in classical music stores that should no longer qualify as such and must be sold in the Rock section haha. They use very little or no orchestral instruments... Experimental music is what draws a distinctive line here and in a decade less and less orchestral recordings will be made - or composed! One can always "upgrade" Holst to the 21 century :)
outterspaces 1 year ago
@richtomes You can't really compare "Group A" to the composers you mention at the beginning of the video. First of all, there are enormous differences within Group A; like, say, between Stockhausen & Schnittke. But, most importantly, you can't say one is better than the other because they're two completely different languages, just like you can't say portuguese is better is better than french, for example. You can like one more than the other, but not say one is better or worse.
cuervodka 1 year ago 18
@cuervodka We shouldn't forget that in fact all these composers are working with the same language, or at least, they think they are. That language is called music, and all these composers are considered part of the same music tradition. No opinion about which is the better music is given in the video.
People and time will decide that.
richtomes 1 year ago
To answer your question, the composers in Group B are all Amish composers (except for Stravinsky who doesn't belong in group B). If you want to be an Amish composer and have no sense of living in the 21st century then start imitating the composers in Group B who were Amish composers. Also, check your dates. The Unanswered Question was written in 1906.
Electrasound 1 year ago
@Electrasound Quite right, thank you - The Unanswered Question 1906, published in 1940. As for the Amish, there were many who told Rachmaninov, Prokoviev, Shostakovich, Walton, Britten, Tippet, Copland, etc the same thing - that they were out of date and looking backward. Thank goodness they didn't listen.
richtomes 1 year ago
thee others still sleep..
weltenglanz3000 1 year ago
thee others still sleep....
weltenglanz3000 1 year ago
I love those groups!!! they are so different from each other and every composer has his own beauty in his peaces. BUT, what about female composers? Are you so fucking out-of-date?
But if this vid should be a modern composition, i´d love it!
DerTodIstTot 1 year ago
@DerTodIstTot That's what it is !
richtomes 1 year ago
@TeesByTruthSurge I am not even sure what he meant by the quote. It would require more context than a text containing one paragraph for me to make sense of it. Personally, I don't care about the quote. I am more concerned with sounds. And I have been a musician for about that long myself, have a masters in performance and am working on a PhD in musicology. One thing that it has taught me is to be open minded about art and try to understand it rather than judge it - even if it isn't t your taste.
DerangedRanger1 1 year ago
@TeesByTruthSurge I really don't know what else to tell except read the posts. Then if things are unclear, ask another question. To me, there is no "good" and "bad" except what you subjectively deem so. They are merely value judgments. You have to decide these things for yourself.
DerangedRanger1 1 year ago
@TeesByTruthSurge How about going back and reading? But if I must spoon feed I will. I am not claiming anyone is "good" or "bad" for, such binary distinctions are for those who wish to oversimplify the world or gain power somehow. My point to you is that you cannot take one source as the end-all when making a decision about Stockhausen's music. Clearly this poster has an agenda. If I were you, I would give Stockhausen more of a chance before making your mind up based on this video. Clear?
DerangedRanger1 1 year ago
Do you really think Stockhausen has the right to speak for all the composers in group A ?? Do you think that e.g. G Ligeti, who has lost several family-members in the holocaust, would have agreed with this silly, idiotic and self-uplifting quote ? Unpleasantly disturbed is what i call it. Stick to the helicopters, Karlheinz, that 's already enough sillyness.
1foradime 1 year ago