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Ron Dough
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« Reply #30 on: 19:07:15, 19-03-2008 » |
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This really is a case of ne'er the twain shall meet. Again.
Many of us would be able to predict pretty accurately who would be likely find the Holliger quartet to be outside their definition of music, and, as ever, their easiest defence against the unknown (or apparently unknowable) is attack. The piece hasn't exactly come out of nowhere: since Beethoven's time string quartets have often been the vehicle for a composer's most advanced experiments, and the genre has certainly been at the extreme cutting edge over the past century or so, so that even with composers who may otherwise appeal to a wider audience, the string quartets have a more rarified appeal. This also means that the accepted language for a string quartet has developed to further extremes, and that there is a longer journey from the standard repertoire to what composers must to do to if they wish to continue to push the envelope today.
John might very well feel the same about some of the Bartok quartets, for example, which are perhaps the most important staging post along the way to today's examples: if he can't relate to them, then much of what has followed since will surely be unapproachable. John's ears are not insensitive, but I'd hazard a guess that neither they nor his tastes are anything like prepared for a goodly part of the music of the last hundred years. On the other hand, his insistence on decrying what he doesn't understand and can't accept to those who live with it daily could well be seen as insensitivity....
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oliver sudden
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« Reply #31 on: 19:08:29, 19-03-2008 » |
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Programming can be very sloppy/ lazy/ cynical these days. This certainly wasn't any of those things!
And none of them are Zehetmair's schtick, in any case. Is there a commercial recording planned? Anyone know? |
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Ian Pace
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« Reply #32 on: 19:12:23, 19-03-2008 » |
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I've come to realise, courtesy of a certain M & S poster, that there is a better way of making one's point on these types of matters:
HOLLIGER F***ING ROOLZ
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'These acts of keeping politics out of music, however, do not prevent musicology from being a political act . . .they assure that every apolitical act assumes a greater political immediacy' - Philip Bohlman, 'Musicology as a Political Act'
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Antheil
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« Reply #33 on: 19:13:45, 19-03-2008 » |
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Some people will say they are genuinely moved by a Jenkins work; I put them in the same category as those who have a similar response to a hideously manipulative and sentimental Hollywood weepie. That's the bit where I begin to bridle rather. Quite apart from the fact I wouldn't want to be caught putting people into 'categories', I really would want to resist the idea that some people's emotions are more or less valuable, important or genuine than those of others. People's emotions are people's emotions and I can't see, either philosophically or in terms of practical morality, how distinctions can or should be drawn between those which count and those which don't, or which count for less. I really can't agree with you at all there, arrogant though it might seem to 'rank' emotions. There are forces at play all the time to produce emotional manipulation, not least when one walks into a supermarket, or via political propaganda. And Hollywood and Karl Jenkins aren't so dissimilar. I think it's not just possible, but vital, to make a distinction between these sorts of things and, say, the emotional response one has to a palpably real phenomenon (for example the death of a relative, or for that matter from apperception of some deep emotion manifested in a piece of music, that one can engage with rather than simply 'have done to one'). And music that induces responses in a manner akin to propaganda is the lowest of low, in my book. Well, I haven't as yet heard the Zehetmair. I will at the weekend. I cannot abide Karl Jenkins, complete tosh. But as to those having a response to "hideously manipulative and sentimental Hollywood weepies" - Count me in!! I love it. I watch Casablanca every two years or so and sob my way through it. Why? Because I enjoy doing so. I love it. I snivel into my kleenex with glorious abandon. Music never does that to me. Why? Cos a Hollywood Fantasy is just that. Sheer Fantasy. A chance to have a good cry. I do get moved by music but not to the extent of bawling my eyes out, because music is not romantic fantasy, music is real. |
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Reality, sa molesworth 2, is so sordid it makes me shudder
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Turfan Fragment
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« Reply #34 on: 19:20:26, 19-03-2008 » |
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This also means that the accepted language for a string quartet has developed to further extremes, and that there is a longer journey from the standard repertoire to what composers must to do to if they wish to continue to push the envelope today. ...to which I'll just add a minor nuance: Holliger does without a kind of thematic development which is present in Bartok -- but by doing away with that, he makes it easier to focus on timbre and other more rarefied parameters from which a traditional formal scheme might detract. So in a sense Holliger is easier to hear than Bartok, as in harder to misunderstand. Am I too far out on a limb there? This paradigm of an ("the") envelope I've found ultimately rather limiting for myself as a composer. When a work is innovative, for me, it is because the work reconfigures our notion of musical truth -- a nasty blob of a thing that changes from time to time and from place to place and from individual to individual. |
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marbleflugel
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« Reply #35 on: 19:31:18, 19-03-2008 » |
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Wise words Ron.
Anty, do you think maybe Casablanca works because of the unseen risotto simmering between Rick and Elsa (and the rest of them). I don't think its manipulative at all, it inhales the fumes contemporaneious.
re: Bartok, an observation from one John Russell in my O-level school music textbook '...To most people Bartok means...nasty noise'.
Since then , diversity culturally seems to have led the English to begin to get rythmn. Paradoxically for Ron's I think correct argument, the string quartet , as a performing entity,has made this discovery relatively late. I felt the Z's coasted rythmically and the Holliger maybe made a virtue out of this lack of 'moto'. I'm thinking , as well as rythmnic vivacity, of an internal dynamic buzz to the harmony that includes the 'growth' Richard mentioned earlier, in fcat`I'd suggest is germane to it albeit expressed subliminally or subtly. Quartets like the Skampas are imho revelations in the field because they convey the cojones in something like Smetana...and Beethoven and Bartok cut through almost any interpretation with vigour and rigour. Quite a good turn by the Cremonas at lunchtime today with those two btw.
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« Last Edit: 19:47:23, 19-03-2008 by marbleflugel »
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'...A celebrity is someone who didn't get the attention they needed as an adult'
Arnold Brown
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John W
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« Reply #36 on: 20:01:20, 19-03-2008 » |
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Well whatever you think I'm missing, I certainly have rhythm  |
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marbleflugel
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« Reply #37 on: 20:20:35, 19-03-2008 » |
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Wouldn't argue with that John . Part of the problem maybe with H's formative milieu was that musos wrote music for other musos, it was essentially scientific research-nowt wrong with that, but in time and life-experience time something broader is called for. Maybe he's getting there.And I hope he'd appreciate you're giving him some time. |
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'...A celebrity is someone who didn't get the attention they needed as an adult'
Arnold Brown
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Evan Johnson
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« Reply #38 on: 23:04:26, 19-03-2008 » |
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Wouldn't argue with that John . Part of the problem maybe with H's formative milieu was that musos wrote music for other musos, it was essentially scientific research-nowt wrong with that, but in time and life-experience time something broader is called for. Maybe he's getting there.And I hope he'd appreciate you're giving him some time. I find it quite patronizing to suggest that a composer born in 1939 is still "getting there." Holliger is quite clearly where he wants to be, and I find it hard to fathom how anyone could accuse the composer of, say, the magesterial masterpiece Scardanelli-Zyklus (which John W might enjoy; it is much less abrasive on the surface, for the most part, than the quartet in question) of not having a human element in his work. |
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marbleflugel
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« Reply #39 on: 23:37:21, 19-03-2008 » |
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Point taken, Evan-I wouldnt presume to criticise on technical grounds. The other aspects of the journey are as unpredictable as human personality, and I also suggest that part of the problem with abstract gestural music is that it lacks a broader interface and currency. Another example of what I'm trying to say is the development of Pierre Boulez, who, like say Berlioz before him, held out for his ideals and at certain point really developed the human factor in terms of communicating those same ideals with a general audience. I don't know the other score you mention and will be glad to look it out-I may indeed be completely wrong.
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'...A celebrity is someone who didn't get the attention they needed as an adult'
Arnold Brown
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John W
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« Reply #40 on: 00:31:28, 20-03-2008 » |
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mf, Prompted by Evan, I gave a listen to several excerpts of Scardanelli-Zyklus, over at Amazon, but I just don't get it  |
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George Garnett
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« Reply #41 on: 00:58:03, 20-03-2008 » |
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I really can't agree with you at all there, arrogant though it might seem to 'rank' emotions. There are forces at play all the time to produce emotional manipulation, not least when one walks into a supermarket, or via political propaganda. And Hollywood and Karl Jenkins aren't so dissimilar. I think it's not just possible, but vital, to make a distinction between these sorts of things and, say, the emotional response one has to a palpably real phenomenon (for example the death of a relative, or for that matter from apperception of some deep emotion manifested in a piece of music, that one can engage with rather than simply 'have done to one'). And music that induces responses in a manner akin to propaganda is the lowest of low, in my book.
That isn't quite what I was trying to drive at. It was the emotions themselves that I was referring to rather than the music that might prompt them or be associated with them. What I was objecting to wasn't the suggestion that Karl Jenkins was manipulative in a way that [ insert name of composer you approve of] wasn't, but the idea that someone who (for example) found comfort in a Karl Jenkins piece at a time of great personal distress was having less genuine or less important or less deeply felt emotions than someone who selects a bit of Tallis. I'd cheerfully agree that KJ is an old fraud whereas TT isn't. What I was resisting was the idea that it follows from that that those who turn to KJ have less deep, important or genuine emotions than those who turn to TT in similar circumstances. The grief at a close relative's funeral isn't any less genuine, complex or profound because the family chooses 'Adiemus' for when the coffin goes behind the curtains than if they had chosen the Tallis Lamentation's. It's one thing to look down on the music; my objection was to looking down on the emotions. But, sorry, this has wandered away again from the Zehetmair Quartet ... |
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« Last Edit: 01:11:32, 20-03-2008 by George Garnett »
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richard barrett
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« Reply #42 on: 09:58:08, 20-03-2008 » |
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Wouldn't argue with that John . Part of the problem maybe with H's formative milieu was that musos wrote music for other musos, it was essentially scientific research-nowt wrong with that, but in time and life-experience time something broader is called for. Maybe he's getting there. I find this a strange thing to say about a composer whose work has never been in the least "scientific", or presented by him as such, but on the other hand he has always been the most poetic among contemporary composers, not just in his involvement with literature (Hölderlin, Walser, Celan, Beckett) but in the way he almost uniquely managed to revitalise the idea of "expressivity" while at the same time developing a whole new musical idiom for it. He must be one of the most inventive comosers of all time, certainly the present time, as regards creating unheard-of timbres and textures, and for me each new work is a major event. George, I think you have a profound point there. I imagine the following scenario: you go to visit someone who has been going through "great personal distress" and find them listening to Karl Jenkins - you wouldn't immediately say "you're not listening to that rubbish are you?", there are times when consolation has to be sought wherever it can be found, while I would revile Jenkins for taking advantage of that susceptibility we all have to some extent. (cf. Marx on religion) |
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oliver sudden
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« Reply #43 on: 10:00:55, 20-03-2008 » |
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[Any time someone thinks we have enough material here to justify moving it to a Holliger thread they only need to pop up a flare...]
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ahinton
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« Reply #44 on: 10:06:33, 20-03-2008 » |
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There are forces at play all the time to produce emotional manipulation, not least when one walks into a supermarket, or via political propaganda. And Hollywood and Karl Jenkins aren't so dissimilar. I think it's not just possible, but vital, to make a distinction between these sorts of things and, say, the emotional response one has to a palpably real phenomenon (for example the death of a relative, or for that matter from apperception of some deep emotion manifested in a piece of music, that one can engage with rather than simply 'have done to one'). And music that induces responses in a manner akin to propaganda is the lowest of low, in my book.
Clearly we read the same book! I couldn't agree more. |
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