Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.1 6/24/83; site astrovax.UUCP Path: utzoo!linus!philabs!seismo!harpo!ulysses!princeton!astrovax!tss From: tss@astrovax.UUCP (Thomas S. Statler) Newsgroups: net.music Subject: Music, real, discussion of Message-ID: <204@astrovax.UUCP> Date: Wed, 4-Jan-84 18:53:49 EST Article-I.D.: astrovax.204 Posted: Wed Jan 4 18:53:49 1984 Date-Received: Fri, 6-Jan-84 01:44:22 EST Organization: Princeton Univ. Astrophysics Lines: 42 Hi, kids! Now that the topics I suggested for discussion have been once around the net, I feel justified in adding my own blurt. Terminology: As a subsitute for 'classical' as a generic term, 'traditional Western art music' is probably the most accurate, but just a bit clumsy. 'Art music' is a bit cleaner, but tends to offend jazz musicians. My own preference is 'concert music', that is, what one would expect to find or intend to be played in a concert hall. Of course, there is already a similar German word that means something else. (To obtain the German, apply the usual rule: change the c's to k's or z's and remove all spaces.) Recent Masterpieces: An impressive list of suggestions has appeared here over the last few weeks, but I think most of you missed the point. Do any of these works get performed as often as, say, a random Haydn symphony? The only one that would even come close to qualifying is, I think, Britten's War Requiem. The trouble is not that good works don't exist, but that orchestras, in their quest for subscribers, are scared to perform them. Almost invariably, if a modern piece is performed at all, it comes sandwiched between Mozart and Brahms, some- what like a bowl of spinach that the audience has to finish off before they are allowed to have dessert. This is not exactly a brand-new phenomenon; Aaron Copland some time ago took the programs for 4 seasons of NY Philharmonic concerts between 1950 and 1955 and added up the total number of works performed and the number by living American composers for each year. I don't have the exact numbers handy, but they were typically something like 4 out of 150. This, I think, is very sad. Why in the world should anyone want to be a serious composer these days, if orchestras continually reject new works in favor of the old warhorses? Are audiences really so pedestrian that they would all stop buying tickets if one new work were performed, say, every two concerts? Verklaerte Nacht: Well. I'm a bit surprised that so many people seem to like this piece. I'll admit that I haven't heard it in a few years, but that's only because I can't bring myself to shell out the bucks for a recording of a piece I really detest. You all recall, I'm sure, that Schoenberg began his experiments in atonality (or 'pantonality', if you prefer) after he decided that nothing more could be done with traditional techniques. Listening to V.N., it seems to me that the real problem was that HE couldn't do anything with them. The whole work sounds like a compilation of the worst of late romanticism-- every cliche, every over-sentimental progression-- and it goes on forever! End of blurt. OK, Schoenberg fans, what have you got to say?