Need good, interesting classical music to study for structure and orchestration

Ahh.... but his neo-periods lasted for decades. My secondary point was not so much each individual piece as our preconceived notion of each composer.

THE MAIN issue was "any measurement".

When I read

and read

I see a connection, and also a "vicious circle". You can't think about what you don't have language for.
All information must have meaning for any learner. Our music education is really divided, as there are so many people who cannot afford weekly private lessons, or quality instruments. I really think learning an instrument and having aspirations, and curiosity is so vital to learning. Those who have not had that blessing, are simply not going to be useful here.
(that's not to say THEY are not musical, or pop music is lesser than. Not at all. I think music is a natural resource. You can harness it, or let it waste. The world is sound.)

I know I am going against the current zeitgeist of "anti-elitism". I have no idea how to tell the difference between a real diamond or a good fake one. Thus I would be terrible at assessments. What I would looking for is not perceptible by the human eye, and even with the right tools, I have no training so the patterns under the microscope mean nothing to me.

One's point of view is always determined first by what one can see.

I would (and yes I will stop talking about the Wapo) also refer you to the famous article/experiment they did with Josha Bell playing violin in the subway. People did not have the time to listen or care.


If you look at Picasso's early work it is very realistic. He had wonderful craft. So did Dali. Neither started out that abstract.
Now if you just jump the gun, and don't follow the thread, you arrive directly at say a triangle with a nipple (I am making this up) and you will find arty types in black turtle necks digging the provocative nature of the work, and the the "general" crowd who think everyone is mad and it's all a con.

These cats used to be called "Artist's Artists":

That's a small crowd and not for everyone. No debate there. Certainly there is "measurement". Underneath all of my lecture is to say.... if you are swimming in that crowd, then don't shut off because you don't like the "ugly" surface. That's shallow. Yes, ugly outwardly and inwardly exist.
No one should like a piece just because it's "outside". Thats the flip side of the same stupid coin.

The reward, and how that would relate to this topic, is ..... if you are not letting the harmonic language of the piece completely dominate your attention (or if you don't like it stop paying attention to it) and what you are left to explore in a deeper way is orchestration and structure.

Let me end my diatribe in this thread with a few final videos.

To correct the Stravinsky (1942, 1951)

A work I consider to be difficult to listen to, but a MASTERWORK. Try the fugue in F

Lastly, let me go full narcissist (hard to tell the difference I am sure) and post what I consider my "Worst piece".
I think this for all the obvious reason. Hell..... I don't even like listening to it. But I learned so much writing this.
It absolutely 100% helped me write a piece for gig 2 months later that sounded like below. Of course one is going to have
less appeal. But I am a better composer (I believe) for having explored other avenues.

Be well everyone !

 

Ah I think I should rephrase - the established academical (conventional) measurement of technical and artistic achievement was thrown out of the window.
This is what I'm referring to :

It is imho no different than what Mike is teaching us so we could argue that today we have other established patterns to judge taste and technical achievement.

 

I understand your opinion, and I have appreciated the exchange of ideas.
Thanks.
Wishing you all the best

 

Not that I have anything meaningful to contribute here, but I wonder if the decline of musicality in households (at least in North America) has to do with the general decline in musical literacy, and therefore taste and demand (both in film and generally ala the Post Malone article), overall. It wasn't that long ago that smaller and more local conservatories were doing well, and that orchestral music in general seemed to be more popular (and Bernstein was giving lectures on Debussy's Impressionism on PBS). I honestly think the absolute vast majority of people I know would fail a "name 10 (or even 5) famous symphonic pieces in one minute" test.
Or maybe it's just the lack of any degree of refined culture here on Vancouver Island, where people wear Crocs to the grocery store (and to live theater performances), and generally show zero awareness for the concept of occasion.

 

I think it has more to do with the degree of complacency that an increasing level of technology begets. Before radio you needed to go to the music hall to witness a concert and experience music in any way that would be regarded as eventful. If you wanted to experience music at home you HAD to play it yourself, this means it was not rare for kids to practice playing a musical instrument at home to a more or less accomplished degree (if the family budget allowed it). This also means musical literacy, with in turn brings understanding. And when you understand the music that you are listening that is when it grabs you and takes ahold of you in deeper levels than the emotional. It is one thing to listen to a fugue, and another to listen and be able to follow the development, the latter being the most rewarding I would regard.

So, getting back to today, this latter generation of guys and girls can't even muster the backbone to withstand the hours of practice needed to get yourself up to a decent level as a performer. Ear training is thrown out the window if the results are not immediate..., music is not even given a chance to romance your psyche, let alone grow in you. And this is amongst the musically inclined. The average Joe and Jane just go along listening to reaggeton and whatever their friends are listening.

But, I am not a pessimist, I am sure the exceptions to the rule are out there fluttering about, and if they manage to amass some fortune (in all meanings of the word), they'll be able to bring forward something unique and personal, that will bring musical development forward, despite the simple and rustic sensibilities of the mainstream. Bernstein's lectures are fantastic, and there's more than a couple online courses aimed at the musically inclined that educate and teach about the greats.

....

I'll stop ranting now. Cheers guys!

 

@Leonardo Badinella Great points! Entertainment -- and I mean excessive, cheap, not even enjoyable distraction -- is such a big part of everyone's life these days, especially people in my generation and younger. People waste inordinate amounts of time on media they legitimately don't even enjoy and that makes them depressed (as confirmed by multiple emerging studies on internet use and social media). The last few years I've been taking an inventory of how much time I spend on my phone, YouTube, etc, and I've gotten to the point where I've password locked my internet on my PC and don't have internet on my phone. It's absolutely horrifying to consider how much time I've wasted in past years on things I didn't even really enjoy. I always laugh when I read "I don't have time to learn an instrument". If you don't have a family and a busy job, it's just not enough of a priority to make time for it. Speaking of which, here I go!

 

Sounds like you got the bull by the horns my man. Keep it up!

 

First off, some good points overall. But avant-garde, these days, encompasses quite a lot. Certainly not true in the case of Bartok or Stravinsky. Serial music is at the extreme end of the avant-garde. Debussy's writing was considered intolerable and structureless noise at first, and is revered today. I'm not sure anyone would argue technical mastery was thrown out of the window.

I'm not really sure what neuroscience and psychology have actually done that's in any way groundbreakingly helpful in this regard? Care to elaborate?

Something I've been thinking about lately: familiarity is hugely important. A lot of these pieces are challenging if you're not already intimately familiar with "classical" music. Put it on while making dinner, or doing chores. Put it on again the next day. Spend some time with it. As you become increasingly familiar with it, it will likely "open up" to you, after which it will be easier to sit down and focus on it. It took me a while to get into Daphnis and Chloe, or the Rite of Spring, and sitting down to try and transcribe either one likely wouldn't have felt interesting if I were not already interested in the pieces.

 

Ah science has been moving slow but it is getting there.. Yes they are actually doing brain-scans while people are listening to music, thinking about music etc.
And yes the idea of familiarity is also at the heart of the research. It is basically the study of how the brain releases chemicals and plays an active part in the music. It will constantly look for patterns and try to predict future outcomes and the reward will be an experienced joy. It is basically proving what Mike is talking about in composition 101.
This research does indicate, according to Robert Gjerdingen, that our classical western music is in no way more developed than the music of other advanced cultures. I don't have time to quote his book or check up on his sources. [it is big, I recommend it - Music in the Galant style]
In any case we are witnessing a stronger opposition to the ideologies of avant-garde music even within academic circles. Neuroscience is not the only important factor. “The law of stylistic succession” seems to be another strong argument as to why our history of art and music is as twisted as it is. We can also add pseudoscience and philosophy to that list.
I can point you to two recent articles - the main argument is against Schoenberg's pseudoscience and the "ideology of progress",
https://www.searchnewmusic.org/gur.pdf

This Phd study is a statistical study of listening habits of classical music in the 20th century. It also mentions a bunch of romantic composers in the 20th century whom I think would be of interest to Redbanned.
https://www.musicweb-international.com/books/Pauls_two_centuries_in_one.pdf

What you have to understand is the strong oppression there has been within the academic community to question Schoenberg and his ideology. This is now gone and the financial means for further research will be available. The 19th and 20th century has been about ideology, philosophy, pseudoscience and not about actual scientific study.
Knud Jeppesen's work on the Palestrina style and a few other seem to be the only exception. Our tax-money was mostly spent on understanding the finer aspects of compositional methods that the broader public has never cared about.
Well - Stravinsky does matter as the popularity of Star Wars clearly demonstrates. But here the problem is HOW the public enjoys Stravinsky - we seem to prefer these kind of compositional devices underlining very specific parts of a movie.

 

I appreciate the links, and I have a 5 hour plane flight next week and "The Galant Style" is my book for the journey. I am really looking forward to reading it.

That said, you go off the rails often. There is no study, nor problem,with how the public enjoys Stravinsky. Even going on to argue that it's true would prove nothing
except a lowest common denominator, which every advertising marketer knows. Every piece of music - particularly Kid Rock - sounds better in a strip club. I don't know what it is, but pole dancers make it listenable.

That is not really true either. Or half a picture at best. Robert Gjerdingen is an academic. Just watch Bernstein at the end of the Harvard Lectures. He tosses Schoenberg under the bus, and that is 50 years ago.


I posted a whole long list on Music Cognition books. One I recommend is

https://www.oxfordscholarship.com/v...o/9780199590957.001.0001/acprof-9780199590957

He is on faculty at Harvard Medical School and takes up trying to improvise in an early Hydan style. It's a fascinating book IMO

 

Indeed. I studied psychology/neuroscience in uni so I'm relatively familiar, but my philosophical side questions the importance of such research to the average person. There was debate about what cognitive neuroscience was really actually doing while I was in uni, and this illustrates that point well: while it's interesting to understand the physical mechanisms going on underneath our cognitive processes, the fact that "the brain does x and y" and "releases x chemicals during music listening" doesn't functionally tell us anything beyond what we already know. Mike doesn't need to appeal to neuroscience specifically to point out that we're incredible at pattern recognition and build our lives around it; that's easily observable in my 1.5 year old daughter and in people generally. What I was more interested in is what you meant by art and music history being guided by facts rather than taste.

I'll have to give this a read, time permitting. Purely speculatively, I would agree when it comes to specific types of avant-garde music (defining this more specifically is critical, because when I say "avant-garde" I'm not limiting it to atonal and serial music), but I'm curious to know if that's the case with the peak of western music (i.e. classical, romantic, impressionistic composers that have lasted centuries). It's difficult to imagine that long-form works with massive orchestras are somehow equally or less developed than tribal music from i.e. South Africa. That's not a value judgement, for the record.

Are you using pseudoscience and philosophy in the same category here? I don't really understand when it's used as a broad term, because it's inescapable at every level.

Thanks, I'll have a look.

So just for clarification, by avant-garde you're specifically referring to Schoenberg and his later ideology? Indeed those ideologies informed academia, to its irrelevance and discredit in some cases. I'm not familiar with the underpinnings of how those ideas were justified, but I'm also unsure of how neuroscience is supposed to affect that. If you're thinking of broader studies to inform academia, then sure, but it also comes down to what academic institutions are interested in and what they use to justify that. Academic interests, especially in this day and age, often have little to no consideration of scientific findings, nor to sound arguments generally.
Also, as an aside, please beware falling into the scientistic trap of thinking that we're done with philosophy now that science is at the forefront. That is, ironically, a philosophical position, and discussions of this nature always come down to it at root.
Re: Stravinksy. I would think that would be the case with most programmatic music, really, and same with operas. Much of that music is made to tell a story alongside a visual production, and differs considerably in structure than many popular works.

 

I'll make it short.
My own experience with the classical musical education system (composition) is that it is primarily ideology based (I was born in 1983). This is what I have witnessed first hand so my opinion is highly formed by personal experience. I realize now that it might be worse in small countries, who knows. I have never quite understood the ideology until recently and the papers I linked to sums it up very well.

I suppose the "ideology of progress" is both pseudoscientific and philosophical. I don't really know, I am a not a philosopher. I skimmed through a 1795 manual on "science of music" and I can say that the arguments already at that point in time were pseudoscientific. I have a feeling it got even worse in the 19th century. The aggressive pseudoscientific attacks on past or (at that time) present compositional "habits" were very real. I suppose they had their pseudoscience mixed with philosophical thinking. The argument I could get from skimming the 1795 book revolves around "how does nature[as evident in scientific studies] and God[philosophy?] want us to compose. That you can argue "how is a composer supposed to compose" makes it imho very artificial. To me the natural process is listening - then figuring out what you like and THEN figuring out what to do to develop that craft.

What I mean by history being guided by taste or ideology - when you can disregard the most popular musicians and artists of their own generations as not being relevant then you are not documenting an accurate history. I think it is bad when art and music history is not supposed to be critical/objective in the same way as our "normal" history.

 

Ah, I see! In that case we're on the same page. There is a great deal of misunderstanding and revisionism that has gone on in our history in general, but of music specifically on many angles of philosophical subjects, from the ideologies you mention justified by pseudoscience and errant philosophy (didn't Wagner believe something along the lines of German music being the purest and best, and that it will at some point overshadow all other music?) to silly modern misconceptions about the "dark ages" (that no historian has taken seriously since the late '70s, at least) and superstitious notions about i.e. the tritone being "banned" pre-Renaissance (despite it being found in Gregorian chants). In that sense, many new "movements" have sought to supplant and overshadow the last so as to be perceived as superior. Modern methods of uncovering the truth behind this fairly recent history are indeed improving in accuracy.
Re: History guided by ideology -- you also get situations like Wagner publicly defaming Mendelssohn for being Jewish, and his work being unfairly overshadowed for a number of years. It's important to uncover truth accurately, regardless of historical branch.

I agree re: the artificiality. I do think a great deal can be gleaned from principles of nature, such as patterns, directedness, cohesion, interrelatedness, etc, but indeed these are not "oughts" in a strict sense. It certainly is an interesting subject, though -- effective art will always be a reflection of ourselves, our experience and what is around us, and I think will likely always contain elements of the aforementioned, as they are integral to music, stories, and everything else. But there's an awful lot of personal room within those categories.