Set theorists understand just how brilliant this is. Schoenberg was writing music that would not be completely catalogued and structuralized by music theorists until 1973.
i'm so ambivalent...this music sounds pretty terrible...yet from the perspective of musical evolution, the only theories left to do was to throw out tonality and go atonal. I've been listening sporadically to Wozzeck for 10 years now and I still don't really enjoy Wozzeck, except for the party where he kills his wife and the part where he drowns himself and the very end of the opera.
This really is expressive music. It just isn't beautiful to listen to like other pieces would be such as Chopin or Mozart. It does express, just in a non pretty way. It would be a good piece to put to a movie, but not very pretty to listen to.
@ Matteo7419 Right- which made the system created afterwards seem like a way to legitimize to those who could only see music in Schenker Analysis. A proof after the musical thought that preceeded it. - Understood that OP23,25 and 33a and 33B were written in this method- no need to play music historian here...
Please note that the 12 tone system was created, not as a in-human way make music, but more for a way for Schoenberg to legitimize to those dullards and narrow minds that he was not ( as some have said here) " making it up at random" there is serious musical thought and melody going on here. your brain is just expecting the dissonance to resolve back to a major key- sorry he emancipated it and would think you as a fool or expecting such.
Just look at the man and LISTEN to his "music". He was obviously insane. If you listen to modernist trash like this long enough, you will go mad and possibly destroy your soul.
I like this but I wonder if anyone thinks he doesn't really adhere to the ritornelli and the "sehr langsam" directions. Or maybe I am schooled in a more self-consciously expressive school of piano playing.
It is curious to hear this transitional piece of A.S.. You can hear, especially in his use of parallel thirds, some of the idiom of traditional tonality in this work. And the phrasing is somewhat of a romantic vein, with melodic repetitions featuring augmentations and diminutions and the like. All the traditional stuff. Yet it is clearly a new idiom that is forming here. Less exploded, more a distorted mirror of romantic language than a new universe of sound.
@fencegladiator1 Horrible is a strong word. What in particular do you not like about the performance? If you're going to use such strong language, you should explain yourself.
@jbt0107 You are totally right. This performance is not good because it lacks musicality. Schoenberg should be played with a lot of emotion, this is Music, though "atonal," still has relative dissonances and consonances, tension and resolution. Schoenberg would make a lot more sense if performed with lots of feeling and emotion, rather than just hitting all the right notes at the right time according to the score. I think Pollini does this piece a lot better.
@fencegladiator1 I wouldn't say this performance lacks musicality. I think Gould could do more with tempo and dynamic contrast, but I do like how precise his playing is- his use of pedal is especially notable. I'd be interested to hear Pollini's interpretation.
After reading about Schoenberg, including a few of his own comments regarding 12-tone music, it seems more like it was meant to be an artistic challenge than a formula for beautiful music. Testing creativity by setting up limitations. Maybe I misinterpreted the purpose of his work.
I love music. I'm a cellist. I enjoy ALL kinds of music - including Prokofiev, Bartok, and Shostakovich. I understand much musical theory and find it all very interesting. But I can't help but laugh out loud when i hear atonal music! :D Dissonance should be used in moderation and with emotional factors in mind, rather than the being the result of a mathematic compositional system! Why couldn't Schoenberg stick to beautiful pieces like "Transfigured Night"? I personally don't care for this :)
It all comes down to personal tastes and personal background. 'Feelings' as people in the western world look at music are not shared in other cultures necessarily. There is some anthropological work on this if you are interested on the subject.
@IWantToUnderstandIt I don't know if it's "high art". I don't get that phrase. It's a different form of art, one you're more likely to understand if you're educated in music. For those without the privilege, you can always smoke some weed, but not too much, and lay down on your bed with the lights off. Then, let the music come to you, and try and find what feelings the music brings out of you. Ta dah, you now understand Schoenberg.
@libreg i reommend the writings of adorno to address this issue. I don't think 'priviledge' comes into it. It's supposed to be uncomfortable, and you don't need to have a grounding in harmony and counterpoint to know that
@libreg one does not need to be educated in this music to understand it. Just as schoenberg said (and I paraphrase here) "one needs to listen to as one listens to any music". The point is don't analyze it, feel it, what is it trying to say to you.
I'm very sorry. It was circa five months ago, when I wrote this reaction.
Right now, my opinion about Schoenberg' s music has completely changed and that's why I'm very interested in his music. I do not longer think it's awful, but very interesting and inspirating. And this performance isn't that bad, Glenn Gould is a almost perfect pianist!
This piece is my absolute favorite Schoenberg piano piece. The whole opus is great but the first one just blows me away. I played it many years ago. Still the best.
it's simply fascinating to notice the evolution of music and expression. All this powerful accent on individual expression and originality. I don't feel like sharing personal opinions on the matter of taste but I must admit I find it most interesting.
@darthjoey13 But then again, everyone has their favorite compsoer. So I guess they are in the sense that something in widely contrasting composers is beign compared to come to that conclusion...lol
@IanTanYeeEn No! I just came on here to listen to Schoenberg after reading his name in my history books and I don't like his music, doesn't mean I hate Jews :o
How come nobody has commented here? Out of what, nearly 70 thousand hits! I thought that was gorgeous, just loved it! Odd how the composer was so keen to ditch conventional harmonic systems but not metre...
You're not smarter than someone just because they don't like, or as some elitists would put it "get" the music. Everyone has different tastes, and some people like one extreme and dislike the other, while others, like myself, are able to appreciate both sides of the spectrum and everything in between as long as it triggers something in my mind or my soul. Everyone has different tastes so shut the fuck up with the arguing and enjoy the music, and don't bash others for their opinions.
I am not trying to anger people, but just ask a question. I do respect Schoenberg for his skills and theories. But, what do you (if you like this) like about this type of music. I don't hate it, but I'm just not a fan. So, why do you like it?
@libreg Bro, if I modulate random radio waves coming from space into electrical current, connect it to some magnets and paper, and listen to the noise produced, that noise isn't music. If I assign a Sudoku table's numbers a musical note and then play it on a piano, that isn't music. If I use a mathematical matrix to find out what eventual notes I'm going to use in an atonal, non-melodious non-harmonic non-rhythmic work, that is also not music.
studies done where members of an isolated African village, unaccustomed to western music of any kind, are played music and asked "how does this make you feel", and their answers are the same as anyone's. can science explain this? there are theories, but nothing that can be proven. it does not matter. the fact remains, and it should be obvious to anyone. music is a universal language. 12 tone music is universal crud.
A study like that would not be as conclusive as you seem to think. There are lots of other musical parameters to consider beside pitch structure: gesture, texture, dynamics, timbre, rhythm, etc. Your interpretation says more about your ideological biases than it does about the supposed "universality" of tonality. Similar studies done with young children have found that they can enjoy Webern at least as much as they can enjoy Mozart.
@RehenNodrog i'm unconvinced, obviously, so there isn't much point in discussing this further. my whole motivation is sympathy towards my fellow music students who are forced to study this style of music and think, "why can't i enjoy this? what am i lacking? how many more pieces do i have to study before it starts making sense? is it just me?" it isn't just you, and disliking this music doesn't make you stupid. that's really my whole point.
What they (and you) are lacking is an open mind, a willingness to think about music in a different way. It's disheartening that you would go to school to expand your horizons and instead refuse to move beyond the rigid frameworks you've been brought up with.
Of course disliking this music doesn't make you stupid, but I don't care if you like it or not; I do care that you are spreading ignorance and falsehoods about music you clearly know very little about.
(serialism has no roots in culture, in fact it systematically strips away any trace of tradition of culture, that's the reason it was INVENTED. it has its roots in arnold schoenberg. the end.)
you're allowed to like it, you're just not allowed to try and convince anyone else to like it. it is dead, dying, and in another fifty years will be seen for nothing more than what it is, a major contributing factor to the very near death of western art music in the 20th century. when audiences can't listen to what you're writing without nearly vomiting, what you're writing is probably shit.
I'm not trying to convince anyone to like this music (though I am allowed to, just as you are allowed to try to convince people not to like it). I don't care if you don't like it. I do care that you are spreading ignorance and falsehoods about music you clearly know very little about. Serial composition is alive and well. People listen to this music, and they like it.
No one actually feels like vomiting when they listen to atonal music.
people WALK OUT in the rare event a symphonic orchestra decides to play a 12 tone piece. i've SEEN IT. the only places where it has become standard in the repertoire is in universities. want to know why? because it SUCKS. that's why it's dead and dying and that's why it's ultimately going to be forgotten. hell, it's nearly impossibly to remember a 12 tone piece the second after you hear it, because structured repetition is what makes anything memorable, something 12 tone music does not allow.
People walked out on the premieres of Beethoven's late string quartets.
Serial music doesn't allow for structured repetition? An ordered series of pitches whose interval content is always preserved allows for some of the most intricate kinds of structured repetition possible. It is really no less memorable than tonal music (Babbitt's Semi-Simple Variations are very memorable), but if people find it less memorable it is probably only because they are less familiar with idiom.
@darthdidious people have walked out of all kinds of music when it was new. never before has a system of composition been so universally hated by audiences for so long. decades, pretty soon a whole century. but give it another few years, i'm sure people will come around. schoenberg hoped that one day school children will be singing 12 tone melodies. keep the dream alive.
That people may walk out on a performance of serial music (or any kind of music) says more about their openness to the new, the unfamiliar, than it does about anything else.
Search "Boulez" and "Notation II" and listen to how much the audience hates what they hear.
You keep thinking I care whether this music is popular or not. I don't care.
i think this piece is very beautiful. There´s a soft quality in this music that is beyond atonalism, tone rows or whatever.
By the way, I think Sonarrat is right. Tone rows are first found in Schoenberg music in Opus 23. He spend some time doing research to get the tone row theory. Some time, like years. I don´t remember how much, but in that Leibowitz´s book there´s information about it.
After watching Gould's dvd which has some Schoenberg pieces on it I was inspired to play piano... I sat down on a 1893 steinway upright grand and play the best improv free style stuff i have ever played .. my piano teacher who is also my best friend was listening to it in a pure trance and said it was amazing and that i would never be able to play it again- I wish I would have recorded that session -Gould is the Goods! thanks for the post
Schoenberg's Op. 11 is not based on twelve-tone or dodecaphonic technique. There is no tone row. The first piece to use a tone row was Schoenberg's Valse, Op. 23, No. 5. As the poster puts it, Op. 11 is an experiment in free atonality, and a very important one.
@sonarrat There is a tone row. I wrote my final undergrad theory paper on this piece. Its a bit harder to find than some other dodecaphonic pieces, but it is there.
@szopen010101 Oh? And I suppose yopu'd say that that applies to Wagner too, wouldn't you? I'll admit, some people do manipulate the boundaries of 'Free Art' for no other reasons than it is easy, but Schoenberg was heavily tight on his rules. He inventd the twelve tone method, which actually puts more constraints on music than a key signature. It actually tells you where to put each note and when you can chnage the tone row e.t.c. I wish people would appreciate all classical music.
@szopen010101 I agree that I would not categorize this as "music," though I think that title has an implied ending of "that I would listen too on purpose" in this case ;) You should read some of Schoenberg's writings before you dismiss him entirely though. I had to read "Analysis of Four Orchestral Songs" for a class recently and though I still dont really enjoy his music, I a tleast can appreciate him as an extremely intelligent and dedicated artist.
@szopen010101 On the comment about composing "on the staff" rather than "the instrument itself:" Bach in fact wrote much of his music, the entire Art of Fugue for example, at his desk nowhere near an instrument.
In addition, much of "classical" music now is not atonal or super weird at all. Sure you have your John Cages and such but have a listen to a Tan Dun piece or perhaps one of the gorgeous film scores by Morricone or Zimmer.
@scicodude On the mean time when I mentioned electronic music being so far ahead musically and idealistically from the trends we hear in "classical" atonal microtonal arrangements this is what I meant: look up on vimeo.com "Bt-The Antikythera Mechanism" and "Trifonic -Parks on Fire" in this two electronic arrangements you can appreciate a technique called stutter editing but everything rendered musically of course. cheers
@szopen010101 Even minimalism, though grating at times, when done properly can be just as beautiful and expressive as "normal" music. Try listening to Evelyn Glennie's version on "Clapping Music" by Steve Reich (its on Youtube). Its going to bore you at first. But if you give it a chance many people, even "nonbelievers," start to hear patterns and a sense of the music emerging. Its quite fun when you first get it :) Id also recommend, the more "normal," Short Ride in a Fast Machine.
@jamesbannon100 Interesting point. Can any music be non-expressive, i.e is there music that can not in some way be related to some emotion? I think at this point, without investigating it further that all music that is played on the piano can be associated with some emotion.
One must remember that human beings are able to feel quite a range of different emotions: happiness, sadness, loneliness, rage, optimism, angst, fear and on and on...
I'm not an art historian or musicologist, but from what little I've read, I think modern musicians were ready to move completely into atonal music earlier (as early as these experiments) than modern artists were ready to move past representational art into complete abstraction (~WW2; they flirted with it earlier, from 1900-, but they couldn't quite drop representation completely AFAIK). Then again, that ignores that Bach has 12-tone pieces and Islamic art was always abstract.
I played this piece many years ago. This Gould performance of it is really good. I always used Pollini's as a reference, now regrettably after hearing this. It makes me want to pick it up again. I can see ever marking in the score being brought out by Gould. It is VERY good.
This is actually awesome, but I've got my doubts as to the possibilities of conveying certain "moods" or "feelings" without resourcing to tonal, or modal, thinking.
Not sure it's impossible either... but when running from those we often make such heavy use of 'dissonances' (in the "traditional" sense, including even 2nd minors, much as I dislike the term) the creation of something 'smooth' seems... hard, at the very least.
I think atonality is a pretty weird name for something like this... considering it does use tones, and 12 of them. Atonal implies, for too many people, straight-up noise, which this is not. It still has melody, harmony, consonance and dissonance. It's not just noise. However, it doesn't stick to a tonal key or center.
If you want to see something that is even more mindbending, look into microtonal music, which uses tones beyond the usual 12 used in Western music.
@r4myers1 Atonal music isn't music? That really confuses me how you could say something that even you call music isn't music when it is clearly labeled as music. I mean what is music then? A unicorn? A cowboy riding a flying whale?
I mean isn't it music when a kid bangs on pots and pans? Even if it is annoying? Is beatboxing music or just some guy making noises with his mouth? Music is an art. You may not like all art, but that doesn't mean it's not art just because you don't like it.
dig it. i can't say i like listening to atonal schoenberg, but that doesn't mean i don't respect his stuff. it's brilliantly put together - i just think it sounds pretty funky, and not in a good way.
ps. cowboys riding flying whales is an amazing mental image. well done, sir.
@alexrempel That's the point. Nobody likes all art, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't respect it. You don't have to like Jackson Pollock's work, but you should respect that what he does is art. Same thing with Schoenberg. His music may not be the most appealing, but it is music. That guy was saying that it wasn't music. And that is very ignorant to say. Who has the right to decide what is music? Some of Schoenberg's music is iffy, but it's still music.
@r4myers1 Before you declare "atonal music isn't music," listen to some composers besides Schoenberg. Berg for example, or Penderecki (who writes music that defies even notation, much less tonality). Schoenberg took a hard line stance against the music of the time and tried to create something wholly unlike music of the time.His followers however took his ideas and used it to create something else. Without Schoenberg, there is no horror movie music-think of the Dark Knight without its soundtrack
@r4myers1 well,you're a bit late,atonal music has exixted for 1 hundred years by now. Richard Strauss declared his SALOME is completely atonal, and you can't possibly say that that isn't music. Tonality is beautiful,but it's just a part of music,related to a certain period.I'm an harpsichordist,early music player,so I should be more biased than you,but I find this pieces is kind of a staggering beauty...
I'd say that depends on your definition of tonality, but that's a pointless discussion. Even so, the presence or absence of tonality has nothing to do with what makes music "music".
Writing a paper about this right now. It's about how Scriabin emancipated dissonance at this point just as much as Schoenberg, in an entirely different way.
In other cases of Gould with this area of music, I might agree with Johnny down there. Not here. This is fuckin awesome. I've heard several recordings of this, and this one here really brings things to light.
The same thing happ to me.Started with Scriabin then one day heard Pollini in Webern var. 2 move.The rhythm got me first.Looked at crossing hands piano music then started FEELING da m9th M7 ,m2nds. then Survivor from Warsaw .If u can look at cont art u should be able to understand the SOUND OF OUR TIMES.this music is 100 years old now! TRY SCIARRINO .Boulez.Xenakis,Takemitsu.RE Darmstadt pronouncements.
Oh no I 'get it' i really do, Adorno and other marxists theorised alot on this, basicly saying that it is good because it frustrates people and that frustration can be channeled into revolution or some crap, and it s good at that. The problem is it is horrible to listen to which is only why small academic elite types listen to it and hardly anyone knows who is is outside education.
what the hell does Adorno have to do with Schoenberg ? Revolution ? It is not horrible simply because you somehow associate it with all these politcal ideas that you are opposed to. Read a book on Schoenberg !
Adorno theorised alot on Schoenberg's work which is how I came across it.
I didn't say it was horrible because it is marxist, it is horrible because it is distressing to listen to, which is why he had to abandon Schoenberg after decades of promoting him. You have already made it clear you are some kind of student of music, this is only interesting on an academic level, people who are not listening for fun.
@peppermintjohn666 Schoenberg dismissed Adornos thoughts on his work and
it is not Marxist . It is pure music . You don't have to be an academic to appreciate
certain types of music . Everyone has a soul therfore everyone can relate to music
on some level . Schoenberg had a brilliant mind therefore its reasonable to say that his musical works demonstrated a subtlety of expression which you are interpreting as dislocated and horrible .
I don't doubt he was a genius, it is pretty obvious what he is trying to get across and composing music based on an entirely new set of rules is difficult. If you enjoy his music then you are saying he has failed, otherwise he would have stuck to the basic laws of making music nice to listen to, which he has gone out of his way not to follow. Surely you can't tell me this is easy listening for you? are you a massochist or something?
Traditional beautiful melodies & harmonies please us by invoking natural harmonics. Schoenberg doesn't directly do this: his music is often ghostly; sometimes harsh & startling; but beautiful! He creates a sense of meaning in his melodies by restating them in a developing series of variations. The piece is short: try gritting your teeth and listening to it 8 or 10 times, and try to use the score to help you perceive patterns. That's what I had to do: hard, but it pays off.
You know that is the truth if its fans insist you have to listen to it several times before you like it. I mean that just defys the point tof the song which is to throw you off and irritate you.
So, you've never listen to a piece of music, didn't like it much (or understand it) at first, but then after listening to it again a couple of times found it more and more enjoyable to listen to? The only music you like is the music that is immediately appealing to you?
@darthdidious Well it is just a biological fact that among other things, something is more plesant to listen to if it is predictable, the brain just finds it pleasurable. All music follows this on some level, even noise genres which I happen to like. This is an academic attempt to scrap that and create a very intense yet irritating piece, the creator of crazy frog probably set out with a simmilar, less academic, aim.
This music has patterns. Lots of them. It's quite easy for the brain to pick up on them too, even on a first hearing. You probably know this, but it's clear that you have decided ahead of time that this music is bad.
Schoenberg was not an academic. The only professional academic teaching he did involved teaching basic harmony and music appreciation courses to non-music majors. He also wrote a lot about his ideas about music. Lots of composer did this sort of thing.
@peppermintjohn666 You're using your own personal subjective ideas of "musical beauty" and applying it to everyone else's. I happen to find this music is absolutely beautiful, not irritating at all. (And if you think this is irritating, listen to some other modernist composers.) You proved your own point - many would find noise rock irritating. Many find Schoenberg irritating - but many don't. Beauty is absolutely subjective, and don't go around imposing your view of beauty on others'.
@ArtD42 I am sorry but isn't that exactly what you are doing? it in't a subjecftive matter of taste, it is sado massochism. Noise (not 'noise rock' which is nothing to to with noise, and incidently follows all the basic rules of music, so would be a matter of taste) is if nothing else totally predictable, its noise, you know exactly what you are getting.
@peppermintjohn666 I'm saying it's beautiful to me - it doesn't have to be beautiful to you. Many other tonal pieces are very "unpredictable," and that doesn't mean that you or I will find them more beautiful than completely unpredictable, but tonal pieces. The only real difference between this piece and others is the fact that it uses certain harmonies you're not used to. If you listen to it anything long enough, you'll start to find it interesting, even beautiful. Again, beauty is subjective.
Getting enjoyment out of this music means Schoenberg has "failed"? That is an absurd thing to say. Schoenberg meant for people to enjoy his music, and many people do enjoy it. And the people who do enjoy it aren't masochists; that is another absurd and completely ignorant thing to say.
@darthdidious On the contruary I said th song is written in such a way as to be as irritating as possible, so I think it suceeds in that regards. If you really think this chap set out to maka nice piece of music you really think throwing out its basic laws is a good start?
You're an idiot. Schoenberg did not attempt to write music that was deliberately bad sounding. That is a profoundly ignorant thing to say. You clearly don't know anything about this music.
You're assumption that tonality is at the heart of what makes music enjoyable to listen to is without basis and just wrong. You have no idea what you're talking about.
@darthdidious actually, tonality IS at the heart of what makes music enjoyable. many scholars, composers, and scientists have come to believe this. i'm reading "the aesthetics of survival" by george rochberg, you should pick up a copy. it's very interesting. also, read a little about who george rochberg is, if you don't know.
@darthdidious and so the fact that the vast majority of people can hear a chopin nocturne and enjoy it, but can not possibly enjoy a serial piece (at least not on the same level), is what, a coincidence? pure cultural conditioning?
Non-acceptance of the unfamiliar. If most people hate serial and atonal music (probably not true; most people have likely never heard it before or even know it exists), it's probably only because it is incomprehensible to them, the way a foreign language would be. The same psychological phenomenon underlies all forms of intolerance. Appeals to composers like Rochberg are fallacious and don't prove anything; lots of other composers are still writing serial and atonal music.
Set theorists understand just how brilliant this is. Schoenberg was writing music that would not be completely catalogued and structuralized by music theorists until 1973.
to prime form (014) and beyond!
AriaSinger1 4 days ago
listening to this shit makes me want to break something
estring123 1 week ago
@estring123 Your computer keyboard?
fenderbender92 46 minutes ago
Rather listen to this than Air On a G String anyway
lolhatethat 1 week ago
i'm so ambivalent...this music sounds pretty terrible...yet from the perspective of musical evolution, the only theories left to do was to throw out tonality and go atonal. I've been listening sporadically to Wozzeck for 10 years now and I still don't really enjoy Wozzeck, except for the party where he kills his wife and the part where he drowns himself and the very end of the opera.
dalecampbl6 1 week ago
This really is expressive music. It just isn't beautiful to listen to like other pieces would be such as Chopin or Mozart. It does express, just in a non pretty way. It would be a good piece to put to a movie, but not very pretty to listen to.
blhaymon 3 weeks ago
Tonality was here, Atonality is a loser
notabear707 1 month ago
entender o no entender, no entendemos la vida y pretendemos entender el arte , disfruten chiquillos! no hace falta entender para disfrutar..
leriruizdiaz1 1 month ago
The texture of the piece has a lot of similarities to Brahms's op.116-119
largolegato 1 month ago
@largolegato I agree. I find a lot of Schoenberg is quite romantic in taste. I guess I prefer Berg for being less derivative (my opinion, of course).
ClueBand 1 month ago
that was possibly the weirdest thing ive ever heard! interesting though
george4mon 1 month ago 2
Sublime .... .... .... ... .. .. .
rolldito 1 month ago
Expressionism, ill never understand it
biggben561 2 months ago
and dislike. obviously
PSNDemonwing 2 months ago
@PSNDemonwing It all depends on taste ;)
ajpianoman1 1 month ago in playlist Music
@ Matteo7419 Right- which made the system created afterwards seem like a way to legitimize to those who could only see music in Schenker Analysis. A proof after the musical thought that preceeded it. - Understood that OP23,25 and 33a and 33B were written in this method- no need to play music historian here...
400SC 2 months ago
Please note that the 12 tone system was created, not as a in-human way make music, but more for a way for Schoenberg to legitimize to those dullards and narrow minds that he was not ( as some have said here) " making it up at random" there is serious musical thought and melody going on here. your brain is just expecting the dissonance to resolve back to a major key- sorry he emancipated it and would think you as a fool or expecting such.
400SC 2 months ago
@400SC BTW this piece hasn't been written with the 12-tone system.
Matteo7419 2 months ago
Just look at the man and LISTEN to his "music". He was obviously insane. If you listen to modernist trash like this long enough, you will go mad and possibly destroy your soul.
TheGingerellas 3 months ago
Don't lie to yourselves, this is trash!
Rickriquinho 3 months ago
Controlled chaos. O_o
aaronrogers95 3 months ago 3
I like this but I wonder if anyone thinks he doesn't really adhere to the ritornelli and the "sehr langsam" directions. Or maybe I am schooled in a more self-consciously expressive school of piano playing.
loobycliff 3 months ago
It is curious to hear this transitional piece of A.S.. You can hear, especially in his use of parallel thirds, some of the idiom of traditional tonality in this work. And the phrasing is somewhat of a romantic vein, with melodic repetitions featuring augmentations and diminutions and the like. All the traditional stuff. Yet it is clearly a new idiom that is forming here. Less exploded, more a distorted mirror of romantic language than a new universe of sound.
nobodady1 3 months ago
I hope to understand this kind of music some day.
dduddumartinho 4 months ago
If you enjoy Schoenberg, you may also enjoy George Perle.
vortex481 4 months ago
I can always tell when pieces are performed by Glenn Gould. Because he sings along.
bleachfreek 4 months ago
great music, horrible performance.
fencegladiator1 4 months ago
@fencegladiator1 Horrible is a strong word. What in particular do you not like about the performance? If you're going to use such strong language, you should explain yourself.
jbt0107 3 months ago
@jbt0107 You are totally right. This performance is not good because it lacks musicality. Schoenberg should be played with a lot of emotion, this is Music, though "atonal," still has relative dissonances and consonances, tension and resolution. Schoenberg would make a lot more sense if performed with lots of feeling and emotion, rather than just hitting all the right notes at the right time according to the score. I think Pollini does this piece a lot better.
fencegladiator1 3 months ago
@fencegladiator1 I wouldn't say this performance lacks musicality. I think Gould could do more with tempo and dynamic contrast, but I do like how precise his playing is- his use of pedal is especially notable. I'd be interested to hear Pollini's interpretation.
jbt0107 3 months ago
After reading about Schoenberg, including a few of his own comments regarding 12-tone music, it seems more like it was meant to be an artistic challenge than a formula for beautiful music. Testing creativity by setting up limitations. Maybe I misinterpreted the purpose of his work.
gxtmfa 4 months ago
I love music. I'm a cellist. I enjoy ALL kinds of music - including Prokofiev, Bartok, and Shostakovich. I understand much musical theory and find it all very interesting. But I can't help but laugh out loud when i hear atonal music! :D Dissonance should be used in moderation and with emotional factors in mind, rather than the being the result of a mathematic compositional system! Why couldn't Schoenberg stick to beautiful pieces like "Transfigured Night"? I personally don't care for this :)
morganbandy 4 months ago
@morganbandy
It all comes down to personal tastes and personal background. 'Feelings' as people in the western world look at music are not shared in other cultures necessarily. There is some anthropological work on this if you are interested on the subject.
HyenaSeq 4 months ago
They say this is high art. I don't understand it, I don't know how to respect it, how to enjoy it. Can anyone explain it to me?
IWantToUnderstandIt 5 months ago
@IWantToUnderstandIt I don't know if it's "high art". I don't get that phrase. It's a different form of art, one you're more likely to understand if you're educated in music. For those without the privilege, you can always smoke some weed, but not too much, and lay down on your bed with the lights off. Then, let the music come to you, and try and find what feelings the music brings out of you. Ta dah, you now understand Schoenberg.
libreg 5 months ago 19
@libreg i reommend the writings of adorno to address this issue. I don't think 'priviledge' comes into it. It's supposed to be uncomfortable, and you don't need to have a grounding in harmony and counterpoint to know that
mp4401 2 months ago
@libreg one does not need to be educated in this music to understand it. Just as schoenberg said (and I paraphrase here) "one needs to listen to as one listens to any music". The point is don't analyze it, feel it, what is it trying to say to you.
somnynightin78 1 month ago
Awful
Jarnobh 5 months ago
@Jarnobh I know! I mean it's just so random and...what's the point?
jbt0107 3 months ago
@jbt0107
I'm very sorry. It was circa five months ago, when I wrote this reaction.
Right now, my opinion about Schoenberg' s music has completely changed and that's why I'm very interested in his music. I do not longer think it's awful, but very interesting and inspirating. And this performance isn't that bad, Glenn Gould is a almost perfect pianist!
Jarnobh 3 months ago
One of my favorite piano pieces of all time, the phrased expression implemented is astonishing.
TheShredworthy 5 months ago
I like atonal music
sirshitsalot007 5 months ago
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jbt0107 3 months ago
I like how there is not "defined" scale, so he has to put a "natural" symbol next to each note X)
mechwarreir2 6 months ago
so beautiful
MATTDUNCAN1 6 months ago
Wow, what an adventure through a twisted dimension.
tarquin161234 6 months ago
This piece is my absolute favorite Schoenberg piano piece. The whole opus is great but the first one just blows me away. I played it many years ago. Still the best.
rezmogm 7 months ago 6
it's simply fascinating to notice the evolution of music and expression. All this powerful accent on individual expression and originality. I don't feel like sharing personal opinions on the matter of taste but I must admit I find it most interesting.
pais345george 7 months ago
I get it. He wants to be free of the diatonic scale and I-V-IV harmony, but still have a form of order that people can grasp subliminally. Smart.
gettingkilt 7 months ago
By that I meant as they are both composers from the same time period who used dissonance and chromaticism.
darthjoey13 7 months ago
I like this. But not as much as Hindemith.
darthjoey13 8 months ago
@darthjoey13 From what I've heard from Hidnemith I don't see the two as comparable. Schoenberg is far more atonal than he is.
xHuntedGunzPCGx 7 months ago
@darthjoey13 But then again, everyone has their favorite compsoer. So I guess they are in the sense that something in widely contrasting composers is beign compared to come to that conclusion...lol
xHuntedGunzPCGx 7 months ago
I'm studying Nazi history at the moment and just read that Hitler hated avant-garde experimental music & disapproved of schoenberg.
Soooo out of curiosity, I wanted to hear what his compositions sounded like... pretty pants.
dis mun aint got nuffin' on beethoven :o
Blaxigon 8 months ago
@Blaxigon
You don't like Schoenberg?!! Are you a Nazi? Why do you hate the Jews?
IanTanYeeEn 8 months ago
@IanTanYeeEn i'm jewish.... awkward.
Blaxigon 8 months ago
@Blaxigon
So you hate your own people. Even worse.
IanTanYeeEn 8 months ago
@IanTanYeeEn No! I just came on here to listen to Schoenberg after reading his name in my history books and I don't like his music, doesn't mean I hate Jews :o
Blaxigon 8 months ago
@Blaxigon
It was a joke, man. We should stop now before this degrades into an average youtube dialogue.
IanTanYeeEn 8 months ago
@IanTanYeeEn I know you were joking, I should probably mention that I'm not actually Jewish, man.
Blaxigon 8 months ago
How come nobody has commented here? Out of what, nearly 70 thousand hits! I thought that was gorgeous, just loved it! Odd how the composer was so keen to ditch conventional harmonic systems but not metre...
nickshankland 9 months ago
You're not smarter than someone just because they don't like, or as some elitists would put it "get" the music. Everyone has different tastes, and some people like one extreme and dislike the other, while others, like myself, are able to appreciate both sides of the spectrum and everything in between as long as it triggers something in my mind or my soul. Everyone has different tastes so shut the fuck up with the arguing and enjoy the music, and don't bash others for their opinions.
BigBruinekool 9 months ago
@BigBruinekool
lol
darthdidious 9 months ago
I am not trying to anger people, but just ask a question. I do respect Schoenberg for his skills and theories. But, what do you (if you like this) like about this type of music. I don't hate it, but I'm just not a fan. So, why do you like it?
IssmeSouSou 9 months ago
Sounds like Tom and Jerry to me.
manhands18 9 months ago
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Why is everyone arguing so much?? Just listen to the music.
ambrose2 9 months ago
Why is everyone arguing so much?? Just listen to the music.
ambrose2 9 months ago
@ambrose2 Heh, that's the point, it's not music.
YawnGod 5 months ago
@YawnGod Hi this is Johnny Knoxville, and this is me not understanding music. Here we go!
libreg 5 months ago
@libreg Bro, if I modulate random radio waves coming from space into electrical current, connect it to some magnets and paper, and listen to the noise produced, that noise isn't music. If I assign a Sudoku table's numbers a musical note and then play it on a piano, that isn't music. If I use a mathematical matrix to find out what eventual notes I'm going to use in an atonal, non-melodious non-harmonic non-rhythmic work, that is also not music.
Don't be mad, bro.
YawnGod 5 months ago
studies done where members of an isolated African village, unaccustomed to western music of any kind, are played music and asked "how does this make you feel", and their answers are the same as anyone's. can science explain this? there are theories, but nothing that can be proven. it does not matter. the fact remains, and it should be obvious to anyone. music is a universal language. 12 tone music is universal crud.
RehenNodrog 9 months ago
@RehenNodrog
A study like that would not be as conclusive as you seem to think. There are lots of other musical parameters to consider beside pitch structure: gesture, texture, dynamics, timbre, rhythm, etc. Your interpretation says more about your ideological biases than it does about the supposed "universality" of tonality. Similar studies done with young children have found that they can enjoy Webern at least as much as they can enjoy Mozart.
darthdidious 9 months ago
@RehenNodrog i'm unconvinced, obviously, so there isn't much point in discussing this further. my whole motivation is sympathy towards my fellow music students who are forced to study this style of music and think, "why can't i enjoy this? what am i lacking? how many more pieces do i have to study before it starts making sense? is it just me?" it isn't just you, and disliking this music doesn't make you stupid. that's really my whole point.
RehenNodrog 9 months ago
@RehenNodrog
What they (and you) are lacking is an open mind, a willingness to think about music in a different way. It's disheartening that you would go to school to expand your horizons and instead refuse to move beyond the rigid frameworks you've been brought up with.
Of course disliking this music doesn't make you stupid, but I don't care if you like it or not; I do care that you are spreading ignorance and falsehoods about music you clearly know very little about.
darthdidious 9 months ago
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(serialism has no roots in culture, in fact it systematically strips away any trace of tradition of culture, that's the reason it was INVENTED. it has its roots in arnold schoenberg. the end.)
RehenNodrog 9 months ago
you're allowed to like it, you're just not allowed to try and convince anyone else to like it. it is dead, dying, and in another fifty years will be seen for nothing more than what it is, a major contributing factor to the very near death of western art music in the 20th century. when audiences can't listen to what you're writing without nearly vomiting, what you're writing is probably shit.
RehenNodrog 9 months ago
@RehenNodrog
I'm not trying to convince anyone to like this music (though I am allowed to, just as you are allowed to try to convince people not to like it). I don't care if you don't like it. I do care that you are spreading ignorance and falsehoods about music you clearly know very little about. Serial composition is alive and well. People listen to this music, and they like it.
No one actually feels like vomiting when they listen to atonal music.
How can it be both dead and dying?
darthdidious 9 months ago
people WALK OUT in the rare event a symphonic orchestra decides to play a 12 tone piece. i've SEEN IT. the only places where it has become standard in the repertoire is in universities. want to know why? because it SUCKS. that's why it's dead and dying and that's why it's ultimately going to be forgotten. hell, it's nearly impossibly to remember a 12 tone piece the second after you hear it, because structured repetition is what makes anything memorable, something 12 tone music does not allow.
RehenNodrog 9 months ago
@RehenNodrog
People walked out on the premieres of Beethoven's late string quartets.
Serial music doesn't allow for structured repetition? An ordered series of pitches whose interval content is always preserved allows for some of the most intricate kinds of structured repetition possible. It is really no less memorable than tonal music (Babbitt's Semi-Simple Variations are very memorable), but if people find it less memorable it is probably only because they are less familiar with idiom.
darthdidious 9 months ago
@darthdidious people have walked out of all kinds of music when it was new. never before has a system of composition been so universally hated by audiences for so long. decades, pretty soon a whole century. but give it another few years, i'm sure people will come around. schoenberg hoped that one day school children will be singing 12 tone melodies. keep the dream alive.
RehenNodrog 9 months ago
@RehenNodrog
That people may walk out on a performance of serial music (or any kind of music) says more about their openness to the new, the unfamiliar, than it does about anything else.
Search "Boulez" and "Notation II" and listen to how much the audience hates what they hear.
You keep thinking I care whether this music is popular or not. I don't care.
darthdidious 9 months ago
@darthdidious it's dead AND dying, for the purposes of dramatic emphasis.
RehenNodrog 9 months ago
@RehenNodrog
It is not dead or dying. There are many composers today who still compose twelve-tone music.
darthdidious 9 months ago
I'd say this is one of Schoenberg's more accessible pieces, for a non musician to listen to.
paolosilv 9 months ago
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i think this piece is very beautiful. There´s a soft quality in this music that is beyond atonalism, tone rows or whatever.
By the way, I think Sonarrat is right. Tone rows are first found in Schoenberg music in Opus 23. He spend some time doing research to get the tone row theory. Some time, like years. I don´t remember how much, but in that Leibowitz´s book there´s information about it.
brunoyukio 10 months ago
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brunoyukio 10 months ago
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brunoyukio 10 months ago
Beauty
hozhoboe89 10 months ago
When I first listened to this I couldn't even tell it was atonal. This is by far one of my favorite piano pieces.
IronicTiger 10 months ago
Nice, but it could do with some jazzing up.
Mullahgrrl 10 months ago
After watching Gould's dvd which has some Schoenberg pieces on it I was inspired to play piano... I sat down on a 1893 steinway upright grand and play the best improv free style stuff i have ever played .. my piano teacher who is also my best friend was listening to it in a pure trance and said it was amazing and that i would never be able to play it again- I wish I would have recorded that session -Gould is the Goods! thanks for the post
Johnnybeak 10 months ago
Could is a brilliant pianist so the performance cannot be lacking in any way here.
The music is also brilliant. Not as hard to listen to as some would suggest in my opinion.
Hyardacil 10 months ago
I feel like this is like modern conceptual art ie the emperors new clothes.
Almalnum1 10 months ago
Schoenberg's Op. 11 is not based on twelve-tone or dodecaphonic technique. There is no tone row. The first piece to use a tone row was Schoenberg's Valse, Op. 23, No. 5. As the poster puts it, Op. 11 is an experiment in free atonality, and a very important one.
sonarrat 10 months ago
@sonarrat There is a tone row. I wrote my final undergrad theory paper on this piece. Its a bit harder to find than some other dodecaphonic pieces, but it is there.
Tsukasa135 10 months ago
the more i listen the more i like because i start to hear the structure and the charachter's variation. This piece make me love dodecaphonic music !
polszik 11 months ago
It feels weird. It sounds almost good, yet it's so damn far away. And you can never quite catch up to it.
Jannto 11 months ago
its certainly an interesting method of composition, his symphonies using it are terrifying o_0
juswannawatchthings 11 months ago
how much i try, i can't freakin' listen to this music. It drives me so crazy. I can't enjoy it, but i would like to...
dyeahroen 11 months ago
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szopen010101 1 year ago
@szopen010101 Oh? And I suppose yopu'd say that that applies to Wagner too, wouldn't you? I'll admit, some people do manipulate the boundaries of 'Free Art' for no other reasons than it is easy, but Schoenberg was heavily tight on his rules. He inventd the twelve tone method, which actually puts more constraints on music than a key signature. It actually tells you where to put each note and when you can chnage the tone row e.t.c. I wish people would appreciate all classical music.
witness124 1 year ago
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szopen010101 1 year ago
@szopen010101 But What's a truly "musical" idea?
MrMichaelAdrian 1 year ago
@szopen010101 I agree that I would not categorize this as "music," though I think that title has an implied ending of "that I would listen too on purpose" in this case ;) You should read some of Schoenberg's writings before you dismiss him entirely though. I had to read "Analysis of Four Orchestral Songs" for a class recently and though I still dont really enjoy his music, I a tleast can appreciate him as an extremely intelligent and dedicated artist.
scicodude 1 year ago
@szopen010101 On the comment about composing "on the staff" rather than "the instrument itself:" Bach in fact wrote much of his music, the entire Art of Fugue for example, at his desk nowhere near an instrument.
In addition, much of "classical" music now is not atonal or super weird at all. Sure you have your John Cages and such but have a listen to a Tan Dun piece or perhaps one of the gorgeous film scores by Morricone or Zimmer.
scicodude 1 year ago
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szopen010101 1 year ago
@szopen010101 Thanks, I look forward to hearing your reactions :)
scicodude 1 year ago
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@scicodude On the mean time when I mentioned electronic music being so far ahead musically and idealistically from the trends we hear in "classical" atonal microtonal arrangements this is what I meant: look up on vimeo.com "Bt-The Antikythera Mechanism" and "Trifonic -Parks on Fire" in this two electronic arrangements you can appreciate a technique called stutter editing but everything rendered musically of course. cheers
szopen010101 1 year ago
@szopen010101 Even minimalism, though grating at times, when done properly can be just as beautiful and expressive as "normal" music. Try listening to Evelyn Glennie's version on "Clapping Music" by Steve Reich (its on Youtube). Its going to bore you at first. But if you give it a chance many people, even "nonbelievers," start to hear patterns and a sense of the music emerging. Its quite fun when you first get it :) Id also recommend, the more "normal," Short Ride in a Fast Machine.
scicodude 1 year ago
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szopen010101 1 year ago
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szopen010101 1 year ago
@szopen010101 Why is it not musical? I thought it very expressive myself, and I know nothing of 12 tone serialism.
jamesbannon100 1 year ago
@jamesbannon100 Interesting point. Can any music be non-expressive, i.e is there music that can not in some way be related to some emotion? I think at this point, without investigating it further that all music that is played on the piano can be associated with some emotion.
One must remember that human beings are able to feel quite a range of different emotions: happiness, sadness, loneliness, rage, optimism, angst, fear and on and on...
gonrolgonrol 11 months ago
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szopen010101 1 year ago
I'm not an art historian or musicologist, but from what little I've read, I think modern musicians were ready to move completely into atonal music earlier (as early as these experiments) than modern artists were ready to move past representational art into complete abstraction (~WW2; they flirted with it earlier, from 1900-, but they couldn't quite drop representation completely AFAIK). Then again, that ignores that Bach has 12-tone pieces and Islamic art was always abstract.
kingcade 1 year ago
It's not so awful to hear after all :) but it must be horrible to play !!
Sekunde28 1 year ago
@Sekunde28 funny, I was just looking at the score thinking "I could have a go at that".
99hoolio 1 year ago
I played this piece many years ago. This Gould performance of it is really good. I always used Pollini's as a reference, now regrettably after hearing this. It makes me want to pick it up again. I can see ever marking in the score being brought out by Gould. It is VERY good.
MrStrav81 1 year ago
ahh relativism- my noise is good for me, there are no such things as standards
YerJob 1 year ago
This is actually awesome, but I've got my doubts as to the possibilities of conveying certain "moods" or "feelings" without resourcing to tonal, or modal, thinking.
Not sure it's impossible either... but when running from those we often make such heavy use of 'dissonances' (in the "traditional" sense, including even 2nd minors, much as I dislike the term) the creation of something 'smooth' seems... hard, at the very least.
thimacek 1 year ago
I think atonality is a pretty weird name for something like this... considering it does use tones, and 12 of them. Atonal implies, for too many people, straight-up noise, which this is not. It still has melody, harmony, consonance and dissonance. It's not just noise. However, it doesn't stick to a tonal key or center.
If you want to see something that is even more mindbending, look into microtonal music, which uses tones beyond the usual 12 used in Western music.
gotemcoachbuttslmao 1 year ago
sometimes life itself dosnt make any sense, dosnt follow any logic; why should all music have logic?
sdmiz 1 year ago
@sdmiz
Except that this music does have a logic.
darthdidious 1 year ago
atonal music isn't music. It is cringe inducing rhythm. Good for them for trying something new, but tonality is half of what makes music music.
r4myers1 1 year ago
@r4myers1 Atonal music isn't music? That really confuses me how you could say something that even you call music isn't music when it is clearly labeled as music. I mean what is music then? A unicorn? A cowboy riding a flying whale?
I mean isn't it music when a kid bangs on pots and pans? Even if it is annoying? Is beatboxing music or just some guy making noises with his mouth? Music is an art. You may not like all art, but that doesn't mean it's not art just because you don't like it.
BigTymerPimp 1 year ago
@BigTymerPimp
dig it. i can't say i like listening to atonal schoenberg, but that doesn't mean i don't respect his stuff. it's brilliantly put together - i just think it sounds pretty funky, and not in a good way.
ps. cowboys riding flying whales is an amazing mental image. well done, sir.
alexrempel 1 year ago
@alexrempel That's the point. Nobody likes all art, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't respect it. You don't have to like Jackson Pollock's work, but you should respect that what he does is art. Same thing with Schoenberg. His music may not be the most appealing, but it is music. That guy was saying that it wasn't music. And that is very ignorant to say. Who has the right to decide what is music? Some of Schoenberg's music is iffy, but it's still music.
Your welcome for the image by the way.
BigTymerPimp 1 year ago
@r4myers1 Before you declare "atonal music isn't music," listen to some composers besides Schoenberg. Berg for example, or Penderecki (who writes music that defies even notation, much less tonality). Schoenberg took a hard line stance against the music of the time and tried to create something wholly unlike music of the time.His followers however took his ideas and used it to create something else. Without Schoenberg, there is no horror movie music-think of the Dark Knight without its soundtrack
Scheater5 1 year ago
@r4myers1 well,you're a bit late,atonal music has exixted for 1 hundred years by now. Richard Strauss declared his SALOME is completely atonal, and you can't possibly say that that isn't music. Tonality is beautiful,but it's just a part of music,related to a certain period.I'm an harpsichordist,early music player,so I should be more biased than you,but I find this pieces is kind of a staggering beauty...
henricusbajanensis 1 year ago
@r4myers1 Try opening your mind a bit, the world will seem a better place.
humancondition28 1 year ago
@r4myers1
"tonality is half of what makes music music."
If that is so, then most of the music in the world isn't music.
darthdidious 1 year ago
@darthdidious FALSE! most of the music in the wolrd contain tonality, even non-accademic music...
benjironboar 1 year ago
@benjironboar
I'd say that depends on your definition of tonality, but that's a pointless discussion. Even so, the presence or absence of tonality has nothing to do with what makes music "music".
darthdidious 1 year ago
It helps if you imagine the soprano line is a human voice. Easier to hear the 'direction' and the motive....
Still crazy music though...
toneeeeeee 1 year ago
Writing a paper about this right now. It's about how Scriabin emancipated dissonance at this point just as much as Schoenberg, in an entirely different way.
Schoenberg embraced our feelings, Scriabin embraced our souls.
toneeeeeee 1 year ago
Am I the only one that thinks this is ugly? ;D
isabellemarie89 1 year ago
@isabellemarie89
No, but I think it's sexy.
darthdidious 1 year ago
Very cool on paper, but I can sympathize with people with people who can't stand to listen to it.
ohlordbabyjesus 1 year ago 2
@ohlordbabyjesus
It's also cool when you hear it.
darthdidious 1 year ago
interesting. provacative. i do likes it :3
grawful 1 year ago
music like that is much more enjoyable when you play it than when you're just listening
zuzazla 1 year ago
this reminds me of thelonious monk and black flag
DannyStCool 1 year ago
wow this is beautiful :)
429077303 1 year ago
sometimes music's like a spicy food ; it hurts at first but after a while you get used to it
guyroeeandbuzi 1 year ago 2
sometimes music like a spicy food ; it hurts at first but after a while you get used to it
guyroeeandbuzi 1 year ago
Eh, I don't know, Maybe I'm not quite ready for 12-tone music just yet :P
DiscoInTheNunnery 1 year ago
In other cases of Gould with this area of music, I might agree with Johnny down there. Not here. This is fuckin awesome. I've heard several recordings of this, and this one here really brings things to light.
posquint 1 year ago
@posquint There were some interesting dynamic markings Gould disregarded that I wish he hadn't. Otherwise, his interpretation was fascinating.
Bruckner79 1 year ago
The same thing happ to me.Started with Scriabin then one day heard Pollini in Webern var. 2 move.The rhythm got me first.Looked at crossing hands piano music then started FEELING da m9th M7 ,m2nds. then Survivor from Warsaw .If u can look at cont art u should be able to understand the SOUND OF OUR TIMES.this music is 100 years old now! TRY SCIARRINO .Boulez.Xenakis,Takemitsu.RE Darmstadt pronouncements.
lovesGenet 1 year ago
You should definitely look up Bauhaus' recording. Really fantastic; I think Gould is a bit dry here, personally.
John11inch 1 year ago
Schoenberg is very hard to listen to, it is very dislocated and just horrible. a gentle professor of cultural destruction.
peppermintjohn666 1 year ago 3
@peppermintjohn666
better to say that you don't understand it
hieronomy 1 year ago
@hieronomy
Oh no I 'get it' i really do, Adorno and other marxists theorised alot on this, basicly saying that it is good because it frustrates people and that frustration can be channeled into revolution or some crap, and it s good at that. The problem is it is horrible to listen to which is only why small academic elite types listen to it and hardly anyone knows who is is outside education.
peppermintjohn666 1 year ago
@peppermintjohn666
what the hell does Adorno have to do with Schoenberg ? Revolution ? It is not horrible simply because you somehow associate it with all these politcal ideas that you are opposed to. Read a book on Schoenberg !
hieronomy 1 year ago
@hieronomy
Adorno theorised alot on Schoenberg's work which is how I came across it.
I didn't say it was horrible because it is marxist, it is horrible because it is distressing to listen to, which is why he had to abandon Schoenberg after decades of promoting him. You have already made it clear you are some kind of student of music, this is only interesting on an academic level, people who are not listening for fun.
peppermintjohn666 1 year ago
@peppermintjohn666 Schoenberg dismissed Adornos thoughts on his work and
it is not Marxist . It is pure music . You don't have to be an academic to appreciate
certain types of music . Everyone has a soul therfore everyone can relate to music
on some level . Schoenberg had a brilliant mind therefore its reasonable to say that his musical works demonstrated a subtlety of expression which you are interpreting as dislocated and horrible .
hieronomy 1 year ago
@hieronomy
I don't doubt he was a genius, it is pretty obvious what he is trying to get across and composing music based on an entirely new set of rules is difficult. If you enjoy his music then you are saying he has failed, otherwise he would have stuck to the basic laws of making music nice to listen to, which he has gone out of his way not to follow. Surely you can't tell me this is easy listening for you? are you a massochist or something?
peppermintjohn666 1 year ago
@peppermintjohn666
Traditional beautiful melodies & harmonies please us by invoking natural harmonics. Schoenberg doesn't directly do this: his music is often ghostly; sometimes harsh & startling; but beautiful! He creates a sense of meaning in his melodies by restating them in a developing series of variations. The piece is short: try gritting your teeth and listening to it 8 or 10 times, and try to use the score to help you perceive patterns. That's what I had to do: hard, but it pays off.
opus34c 1 year ago
@peppermintjohn666
This has nothing to do with academic interest. You just don't (in essence, can't) get Schoenberg, etc. It's okay, really.
posquint 1 year ago
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isabellemarie89 1 year ago
@isabellemarie89
You know that is the truth if its fans insist you have to listen to it several times before you like it. I mean that just defys the point tof the song which is to throw you off and irritate you.
peppermintjohn666 1 year ago
@peppermintjohn666
So, you've never listen to a piece of music, didn't like it much (or understand it) at first, but then after listening to it again a couple of times found it more and more enjoyable to listen to? The only music you like is the music that is immediately appealing to you?
darthdidious 1 year ago
@darthdidious Well it is just a biological fact that among other things, something is more plesant to listen to if it is predictable, the brain just finds it pleasurable. All music follows this on some level, even noise genres which I happen to like. This is an academic attempt to scrap that and create a very intense yet irritating piece, the creator of crazy frog probably set out with a simmilar, less academic, aim.
peppermintjohn666 1 year ago
@peppermintjohn666
This music has patterns. Lots of them. It's quite easy for the brain to pick up on them too, even on a first hearing. You probably know this, but it's clear that you have decided ahead of time that this music is bad.
Schoenberg was not an academic. The only professional academic teaching he did involved teaching basic harmony and music appreciation courses to non-music majors. He also wrote a lot about his ideas about music. Lots of composer did this sort of thing.
darthdidious 1 year ago
@peppermintjohn666 You're using your own personal subjective ideas of "musical beauty" and applying it to everyone else's. I happen to find this music is absolutely beautiful, not irritating at all. (And if you think this is irritating, listen to some other modernist composers.) You proved your own point - many would find noise rock irritating. Many find Schoenberg irritating - but many don't. Beauty is absolutely subjective, and don't go around imposing your view of beauty on others'.
ArtD42 1 year ago
@ArtD42 I am sorry but isn't that exactly what you are doing? it in't a subjecftive matter of taste, it is sado massochism. Noise (not 'noise rock' which is nothing to to with noise, and incidently follows all the basic rules of music, so would be a matter of taste) is if nothing else totally predictable, its noise, you know exactly what you are getting.
peppermintjohn666 1 year ago
@peppermintjohn666 I'm saying it's beautiful to me - it doesn't have to be beautiful to you. Many other tonal pieces are very "unpredictable," and that doesn't mean that you or I will find them more beautiful than completely unpredictable, but tonal pieces. The only real difference between this piece and others is the fact that it uses certain harmonies you're not used to. If you listen to it anything long enough, you'll start to find it interesting, even beautiful. Again, beauty is subjective.
ArtD42 1 year ago
@peppermintjohn666
Getting enjoyment out of this music means Schoenberg has "failed"? That is an absurd thing to say. Schoenberg meant for people to enjoy his music, and many people do enjoy it. And the people who do enjoy it aren't masochists; that is another absurd and completely ignorant thing to say.
darthdidious 1 year ago
@darthdidious On the contruary I said th song is written in such a way as to be as irritating as possible, so I think it suceeds in that regards. If you really think this chap set out to maka nice piece of music you really think throwing out its basic laws is a good start?
peppermintjohn666 1 year ago
@peppermintjohn666
You're an idiot. Schoenberg did not attempt to write music that was deliberately bad sounding. That is a profoundly ignorant thing to say. You clearly don't know anything about this music.
You're assumption that tonality is at the heart of what makes music enjoyable to listen to is without basis and just wrong. You have no idea what you're talking about.
darthdidious 1 year ago 11
@darthdidious actually, tonality IS at the heart of what makes music enjoyable. many scholars, composers, and scientists have come to believe this. i'm reading "the aesthetics of survival" by george rochberg, you should pick up a copy. it's very interesting. also, read a little about who george rochberg is, if you don't know.
RehenNodrog 9 months ago
@RehenNodrog
No it isn't. I like a lot of music that isn't tonal, and I know many other people who do. The consensus you speak of simply does not exist.
I know who George Rochberg is, and I know why he holds the positions that he does. His opinions are nothing more than his opinions.
darthdidious 9 months ago
@darthdidious and so the fact that the vast majority of people can hear a chopin nocturne and enjoy it, but can not possibly enjoy a serial piece (at least not on the same level), is what, a coincidence? pure cultural conditioning?
RehenNodrog 9 months ago
@RehenNodrog
Non-acceptance of the unfamiliar. If most people hate serial and atonal music (probably not true; most people have likely never heard it before or even know it exists), it's probably only because it is incomprehensible to them, the way a foreign language would be. The same psychological phenomenon underlies all forms of intolerance. Appeals to composers like Rochberg are fallacious and don't prove anything; lots of other composers are still writing serial and atonal music.
darthdidious 9 months ago