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Well good. It seems like we're not gonna be cut off just yet.

In the meantime, I wanna propose a deal to those whom I feel are reacting more personally to me than to the content of my posts. But the deal requires a little explanation. The "ignore this user" button isn't as effective as it might be. I've tried it. It is just too easy to push the button a second time and have a little peek.

But I will make a pledge to those who I feel are reacting personally to me rather than to my content, (I think you have a pretty good sense of who you might be). I pledge to push your "ignore this user" button, and never, ever peek at your posts, if you promise to push my "ignore this user" button, and never, ever peek at my posts?"

Deal?

If you accept, let me know with a private message, and we'll never come to this point again.

Tomasino

Well, no, I didn't say I couldn't imagine what it would take to offend you. I said I couldn't imagine what it would take for you to see that a comparison between two things had been made.

To me, if a person says "this is like that", a comparison has been made. And actually identifying every single aspect of the comparison isn't needed to see which parts are parallels - that's just the way analogies work.

I am not (well, not yet) going to go into the archives to find the examples I know are there of tomasino's rubbishing of certain modern music. Knowing that background, it is hard for me not to see it in the post under discussion here, even if it is not straightforwardly stated.

He says he won't listen in a spirit of tolerance until he gets used to the music and might even like it. Well, why not? He says doing so can bring strange results. Really? What's so strange about learning how to listen to something you don't first understand?

Well, he thinks it's like getting used to some bad smell. In other words, the music is still not any good, it's just that the listener has become inured to it.

Now, you may read that as simply expressing personal taste, but it reads to me as saying the music is disgusting.

Thanks for reminding me! It's happy hour -- somewhere. Gotta go.

He may not have said it but the sentiment was prevalent. I love a lot of 20th century music/composers but the point is that the avant-guarde have been the bullies so its just something to keep in mind when feeling affronted

That's rather a broad brush you are painting with.

It's interesting that we're apparently supposed to make a guess about your feelings, and then respond.

If you are talking to me, I am not reacting to you personally. I have no idea of who you are. I am reacting to stuff you post here, i.e., the "content".

Of course, if you post something that insults my taste in music, you will get push-back, and it might be a little cranky. But it's not about you, it's about what you posted.

Obviously, when talking about what someone posts, there will be references to the person doing the writing. There may be references to their tone. There may be references to their thinking. But it's not "personal" in the sense that I think you mean.

Anyway, to me, it's unwise to make deals based on trust with strangers, so count me out of your little scheme. I have a number of people here on my "Ignore user" list, and you won't find me responding to their posts. It's not that hard. I didn't need to make any deal for that to happen. I didn't need to make any announcement about it. Once in a while, I might make a reference to my list. Sometimes a user will be on it for a while, and then I'll take them off for a while, and then put them back on. Or not. And once in a while, if a user on my list gets quoted in someone else's message and I really couldn't avoid reading it, I may respond indirectly. If one of them starts a thread and there are responses that interest me, I may participate without even needing to read the OP. I think the "Ignore user" thing works out pretty well.

It's not. You can't deny that the "modernists", in music and the visual arts, have held sway for years, and the audience as the receiver has been cowed by the stance of the Babbitts He may not have explicitly said "who cares..." but he did say the composer was a specialist and the audience needs education and exposure to understand and appreciate. This puts the onus on the audience and not the artist. He rightly decried populism but there is an enormous difference between populism and using standardized and accepted modes of communicationThen you end up with gallery shows with mattresses on the ceiling and toilet bowls etc because the artist can do whatever they want and just say the audience doesn't get it. People don't want to appear stupid so the canard gets perpetuat

You're right about that, of course, and I apologize for mischaracterizing what you said.

It is a broad brush because although there definitely were some intellectual bullies (e.g., Boulez was pretty famous as one), it was hardly a characteristic of all modernist or avant garde composers. And, as far as I know, they haven't held sway in quite a long time, probably a couple of decades at least. For example, of the composers in residence with the major orchestras in the US, I can't think of one that falls into that genre. I'm sure there are some in the composition departments some universities, but that whole "you must write strict 12-tone or get out my class" thing has been over in most places for quite a while, from what I hear.

No apology necessary - I figured you just misread it.

By the way, I found out that Babbitt's own title for that essay was "The Composer as Specialist".

It's funny, I used to loathe Babbitt's music, and everything I thought he stood for. I may not have made a complete 180 degree about-face on that, but it's probably around 167 degrees. At least I can listen to some of it with some pleasure, and don't think he was a complete ogre anymore.

It's interesting that Stephen Sondheim was a student of his, and says that he asked to be taught serial composition, but Babbitt wouldn't do it, saying Sondheim hadn't exhausted his tonal resources yet. So I guess he wasn't imposing his own compositional methods on his students.

I just watched this very interesting and entertaining documentary on Babbitt -

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sf_Zfpq3gqk

and thought Sondheim's comments were particularly interesting, especially since they aren't from within academia. Similarly, the comments of Stanley Jordan, a jazz guitarist who also studied with Babbitt, are illuminating, I think.

Absolutely BRILLIANT!!! Tom, I don't know when I've laughed so hard at a Minnesoooota story!

You even managed to get in some references to Ole and Leena

Xavier's family's initiation rites for outsiders attempting to marry into the fold with Chitlins had a familiar ring to it. However, my family offered a second food option if a newcomer had the nerve to say they didn't like the Chitlins. The second food option would be a steak dinner. Of course, one would have to eat at least one Chitlin to confirm they truly didn't like Chitlins. That seemed quite reasonable to Reggie, the newcomer who was about to be initiated.

Reggie started to become suspicious that it was a trick, and there wouldn't really be any steak if he ate the Chitlin. Not to worry, his beloved told him. "Cousin Alana hates Chitlins and is always served steak instead of Chitlins," his beloved assured. "See here is the steak they'll cook to your liking if you at least give one Chitlin a try!"

Reggie cautiously put the Chitlin in his mouth and he gagged. As promised, a steak dinner was served to Reggie, cousin Alana and a few other family members. Reggie thought he had gotten off easy. WRONG! "Well, looks like we got another one to eat a Chitlin for their supper rather than singing for it," proclaimed one of the family elders. The room exploded into laughter.

Well said.

Tomasino

Actually, WR, the headline title does not mislead, as he said something very close to that in this paragraph:

"I say all this not to present a picture of a virtuous music in a sinful world, but to point up the problems of a special music in an alien and inapposite world. And so, I dare suggest that the composer would do himself and his music an immediate and eventual service by total, resolute, and voluntary withdrawal from this public world to one of private performance and electronic media, with its very real possibility of complete elimination of the public and social aspects of musical composition. By so doing, the separation between the domains would be defined beyond any possibility of confusion of categories, and the composer would be free to pursue a private life of professional achievement, as opposed to a public life of unprofessional compromise and exhibitionism."

Tomasino

Babbitt's quote perfectly encapsulates the modernist shift from artist as a servant and the entire historical function of art to art as pure fancy and intellectual indulgence

WR, there's no need to guess my feelings. I'll make them even clearer. You may not mean it personally, I wouldn't know that for a fact--but I take it personally, and I do know that for a fact. I have proposed a private truce, and if one of us fails to live up to it and does respond to the other, everyone will know they peeked and broke the truce, as the other will be able to post the deal that was made. This is not a deal "based on trust between strangers. Within the context of Piano World, we know each other quite well. And "trust." It's not that either. The idea is that the threat of public embarrassment will enforce the deal. As to the problem of finding ourselves participating on the same post, and being quoted, just give me a little space. Take the time to write around me bit. I'll do the same.

So have a heart. If not for yourself, do it for me.

Push the button and let me know, and I'll push the button and let you know, and I will be relieved of all the feelings that you are attacking me. It would be a real favor to me, even a gift. It would loosen the hesitancy I feel in contributing to Piano World, because I would then be able to more freely participate in the forums, both in content and in terms of allowing some of my personality to hang out a bit--to be funny, to be wry, to be enjoyable, and maybe even a little passionate at times--without feeling I must spend so much time writing as cautiously and carefully as I feel I must. It makes me feel hobbled in my personal style. Afterall, this is an online forum, not an academic forum. We're all people with personalities. I'd like to be a little looser in my participation. I hate participating with the attitude that I must "give as good as I get." I just loathe it.

And I'd rather participate more on Piano World, not less, and there are any number of Piano World participants who would like to hear more from me. They like my posts. They find them "interesting," "always on point," "good content," "thoughtful"--they have said so both openly and in private messages--but the fear of attack, intentional on your part, or not, inhibits me.

Please. What does it cost you?

Tomasino

It costs a very solid idea: That neither of you are ready to give up, stop fighting, change your minds even a little, or assume (even in fake) that you are wrong!

That goes if wr accepts the iggy invitation! Otherwise this leaves you and your suggestion!

You see, you should be stronger than that: Just ignore him! I tend to do that with a few people, but I don't need the ignore button (and btw, I don't think that I've caused any heated hatred here, except for with people who are long gone now (Saul comes to mind, for example)...

Oh, btw, I don't really mind your posts, in fact I enjoy them a lot, but the smelly socks was a bad analogy, exactly because my life is contemporary classical music and it pains me to see such analogies... The opposite never stands true really: Can you imagine thread labelled "What on earth is about Chopin? He's ugly, his music is awful, and he's popular! Why, oh why, oh why?!?!". It just doesn't happen.

But atonal music? People don't get it (even though nice people create nice threads and get nice replies... Take a look at Joels thread for example).

Actually, I agree with the content of this quote. I believe all artists (composers, writers, painters, sculptors, etc.) should create only what pleases them, and should never allow public desires or expectation to intrude on this creative process. Deliberately pandering to public taste for the purpose of fame or fortune is the very definition of "schlock art", or "kitsch".

But this relationship between the artist and the public is a double-edged sword. While the artist may (and IMO should) ignore the collective public taste during the creative process, that same artist should also have zero expectations that this same ignored public will then embrace the final product. I commend Babbitt in the above quote for recognizing this, because he called for total "withdrawal from this public world to one of private performance and electronic media." So he seems to extend the separation beyond the "creation" phase. But I think many composers find the thought of "public" acceptance so tantalizing, they simply cannot resist the "world premiere", only to discover that what they thought was pleasing did not please. The result is often a dejected, embittered composer, who blames the ignorant, unscrubbed masses for his failure.

This relationship between composer and public is a fascinating one, and is discussed in greater depth in Henry Pleasants' famous (or should I say "infamous") book, "The Agony of Modern Music", published in 1955. I know the book is considered outright heresy in most music circles, and much of it is indeed "rubbish" (especially his prognostications), but there was also much that I agreed with. However, I would NOT recommend this book to: wr, currawong, or Nikolas.

Except that it wasn't a "modernist shift". Try Gesualdo. Beethoven wrote plenty of advanced music that was "intellectual indulgence" intended for musically literate connoisseurs, and he would be mightily offended at the idea of composer as servant.

Yes, you could say Beethoven was the first modernist, and he may have been offended but he was still a human being and that doesn't make him right. I don't mean servant in the literal sense as in one who would carry the luggage, but one who's duty is to *serve the spirit and function of art which had always been to put people in accord with their world during their time.
People love to reference Beethoven's late works as a means of supporting the idea of "too difficult at first listen position" but there are many many moments of those late works which are highly accessible. I would argue that the waldstein is as ethereal transcendent and simultaneously more accessible than the last trio of sonatas or the late string quartets.

Speaking of Babbitt, I took a class with a protege of his who writes fractal music and he didn't like late Beethoven and said it was "weird"
I think it was a short work by Soloman that did a lot to perpetuate the late Beethoven as mystic idea