Taking Time out to Hate on Modernism

Because, really. Who doesn't have the time--or extra column inches--to do a little modernism-hating?

Review: Carlsbad Music Festival 'L.A. Satellite Concert', Josef Woodard, L.A. Times ("blogs"), September 24, 2009

It may be too soon and too hyperbolic to declare Carlsbad as a new hotbed of contemporary classical music action.

First, is "classical music action" better or worse than classical music? Different? Is it, like, concerts and stuff?

Also, the rhetorical force of hyperbole is diminished when you point it out to your reader.

But as the sixth annual Carlsbad Music Festival unfolds this weekend featuring new music notables the Calder String Quartet, the California E.A.R. Unit and guitarist-composer-conceptualist Fred Frith, clearly something is abuzz in the seaside town, at least for one weekend each year.

One weekend a year? Yeah, I'd say that does not qualify as a hotbed of "classical music action." So, in fairness, describing it thusly would be an excellent use of hyperbole. Alternately, I suppose, you could just write that writing a hyperbole would be hyperbolic.

Figure 1: Apollonius rules. Conic sections, bitches!

Founded and nimbly run by young composer-violinist Matt McBane, the festival provides a fresh West Coast forum for new music, commissioned, performed and served up with seriousness as well as audience accessibility.

Ah, they provided wheelchair ramps and enhanced hearing devices.

What? No?

They "served up...audience accessibility?" I bet I hope that doesn't mean what I hope I bet it means.

As a more urbanized festival harbinger, Wednesday at Zipper Hall, an “L.A. Satellite Concert” offered a taste of what is to come this weekend. The program of four pieces was evenly divided between ink-still-wet world premieres and past CMF commissions, testimony to the festival’s growing feeling of a continuum.

At least the harbinger was recursively doing its job as a taste of what is to come (and other cumbersome redundancies).

[sings a little song] The next paragraph is my faaa-vorite!

While the pieces at the Zipper differed, a general aesthetic spirit here accentuated modes of contemporary music relatively free of harsh or dissonant elements, except as points of tension in carefully constructed conceptual schemes. In other words, this was ear-friendly contemporary music, without the intellectual factors often alienating to audiences disinclined toward old school Modernism.

Ha ha! Awesome. Let's do it again, with feeling.

While the pieces at the Zipper differed,

ZOMG you guys! The pieces...were different pieces? Better put that in the review [types furiously and earnestly].

...a general aesthetic spirit here accentuated modes of contemporary music relatively free of harsh or dissonant elements, except as points of tension in carefully constructed conceptual schemes.

Man, Americans love a good challenge, don't we?

Basically, there wasn't really any "harsh or dissonant" music on the program, so the strategy is to present the virtues of the music that was played as a lack of something not present. That's a great selling point. Because, hey: the oatmeal may be bland, but at least it didn't taste like poison!

Figure 2: xkcd is most excellent.

In other words, this was ear-friendly contemporary music, without the intellectual factors often alienating to audiences disinclined toward old school Modernism.

Yeah. So Charles Ives and I think that sucks.

Figure 3: "If a composer has a nice wife and some nice children, how can he let the children starve on his dissonances?"

Sure, it's fine if some people are "disinclined toward old school Modernism," but why propogate that (frankly) small-mindedness while promoting a product (and, yes, that's what it is) that doesn't, really, have anything to do with that?

Figure 4: Free of harsh or dissonant elements (except in the service of its carefully constructed conceptual scheme), The Runaway Bunny offers all the Happy Fuzzy Bunny Story Time you're looking for without the intellectual factors often alienating to audiences!

Again, to be clear:

The problem isn't that some contemporary music is more-or-less consonant. The problem isn't that some people don't like Ives (or Mann, or Eisenstein, or Kandinsky, or Pound).

The problem is the persistent propagation of the Myth of the Awful Modernist Music, particularly when bought wholesale and sold at a generous markup to a public reading an article that has nothing whatever to do with the music you're disparaging.

Is this sort of like why Coke and Pepsi still spend billions of dollars on advertising annually? Somewhere, someone hasn't heard that a) it's not 1932, b) music (and, astoundingly, most of the rest of the world) isn't like it was in 1932?

"HEY! EVERYONE! I'm writing an article about particle accelerators and their potential applications in the field of theoretical physics! Oh, and FUCK SCHOENBERG!"

Figure 5: How'd Shoenberg get dragged into this? Oh, right.

Gaaaah!

So, great. Take your carefully-pointed-out hyperboles and your fuzzy bunny music and slag off to Carlsbad and get paid to write words for money. I don't care. Just don't drag so-called "intellectual" music through the mud while you're at it. It's not really within the purview of what you're talking about, and it does a disservice to other, perfectly valid kinds of art and expression.

Josef Woodard: You're not helping.

A Rebuttal, In Memoriam

Schoenberg just made me smile!



Sayonara.

Ho Hum

Another Bernard Holland article. Ho hum.

Schoenberg and his school do not make us smile,

(yawn) Ho hum.

but then, they rarely try.

Ho (yawn) hum.

Ho. Hum. Yawn.
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The Sorcerer

Remember David Hurwitz, from Classicstoday.com, the guy who can't keep his anti-modernist fingers off of the qwerty keyboard? He reviews a disc by, oh shit, John Cage.

There's really no way to "review" John Cage's "number" pieces, since they leave so much open to chance and it's impossible to say what they are supposed to sound like, or if the performance accurately reflects Cage's intentions.

Well, if you stuck to your guidelines (Classicstoday.com’s review philosophy), and if you knew a little something about John Cage...

Anyone who pretends otherwise is simply blowing hot air, so let's just say that if you are collecting this cycle of works and need One, Three, and Six, here they are, obviously well-played and very well recorded [sic].

...you wouldn’t have to talk about the “quality” of the music. Just flat-out say, “Here they are, obviously well-played and very well recorded.” Enough said. But you just can’t help yourself, can you?

The two works containing actual music as it's generally understood, ...

Fuck this. I’m going to go clean my cat’s litterbox.

Shame on Allan Kozinn!

Like Steve Smith in an earlier post, I caught NY Times columnist Allan Kozinn with his hand in the prefabricated, stock sentence jar.

__________ was at his best, bringing crisp articulation and an irresistible zest to the outer movements and giving the Largo an understated but pleasing lilt.

Shame on you, Allan! Go to your room, too! And no TV for a... what!? Don’t you talk back to me! Don’t you get that tone with Alfred Schnittke!

Tone rows melt into stretches of arching Romanticism, which coalesce into modernist acidity.

Don’t ever, ever talk about composers like that! Shame on you! You are so grounded. Just wait ‘til your father gets home.

Seriously, this is FUBAR. Kozinn has apparently taken Holland’s place on top of the modernist-hating pedestal, with an even more spiteful and backhanded tone. In one lousy sentence, he makes his opinion heard, loud and clear. This is, honestly, the worst piece of hateful music writing I have ever encountered.

Right off the bat, he belittles “tone rows”—which we all know by now are associated with Schoenberg—by comparing them to Romanticism. Tone rows, a humble little compositional technique, are compared to a rather hefty, stereotypically aggrandized period of sentimental thought. Why not replace “Romanticism” with a technique of the composers from that period, say functional harmony? You know, to be fair about this whole thing. Or instead of “tone rows,” why not name the period of thought associated with tone rows, say modernism? Right? Equal weight, no emphasis on either one. Of course, this is not what Kozinn does.

He also qualifies “Romanticism” with “arching.” Why? To what end? In the same spirit of fairness, as before, why not qualify “tone rows” with something similar, like “shapely?”

Notice how Kozinn cleverly capitalizes “Romanticism” but does not give “modernist” the same respect? Subtle, isn’t it? Not that it’s poor usage, but, for aesthetic reasons, it diminishes, or taints, the importance of modernism.

And when you mix modernism and romanticism, you get “modernist acidity.” Again, anything modernism touches turns into something nasty and “acidic.” This is just a flagrant and gratuitous stereotype. Shame on Kozinn.

To top it off, I’m not quite comfortable placing Alfred Schnittke in the modernist camp; one could easily argue that his eclectic musical personality is more indicative of post-modernism. Either way, this just intensifies Kozinn’s anything-new-is-to-be-lumped-together stereotype. And it reinforces his lack of knowledge, or research, about music, especially Schnittke.

Allan?! I’m not going to tell you twice! Apologize to Mr. Schnittke!

Yet it’s not quite a free-for-all.

Allan!? That’s not an apology!

To be fair, though, let me explain. I jumped into the middle of his description of Schnittke’s Concerto for Piano and Strings. He said this earlier:

This is Schnittke in his quirky, wry mode.

Schnittke is quirky.

The work’s single movement quotes, with distortions, Beethoven’s “Moonlight” Sonata and Russian Orthodox chants and alludes to Renaissance choral writing and Stravinsky.

This is why Schnittke can be quirky: he is eclectic (that’s also why I think he’s a post-modernist). This is all fair and good. However, after the penultimate shit-slinging sentence, he says:

Yet it’s not quite a free-for-all.

So, given the Beethoven, the Russian Orthdox chants, the Renaissance writing, Stravinsky, tone rows and arching Romanticism, I can see how he might think that it’s a free-for-all, of styles. No problem, there. The problem is that he begins with “yet,” suggesting that the “modernist acidity” is a direct result of Schnittke’s eclecticism. Kozinn even tempers this with “quite,” acknowledging that it is a free-for-all, but that there’s something else that might make this acidic mess go away.

The wispy, tentative piano figure that opens the work resurfaces in different guises, giving the piece a measure of unity.

A measure of unity? That’s it?

Translation: the piece is a bunch of nonsensical modernist poo, but the piano repeats some wispy things, which gives it a “measure of unity.”

That is most definitely NOT an apology! Shame on you, Kozinn!

Empiricus: Mr. Schnittke, I must apologize for my little Allan’s actions. But then again, he doesn’t know any better, which is why he writes for the leading daily in the country. Also, if you’ve read the rest of the article, please give my apologies to Ms. Higdon as well. The inner movements of her piece were good, too. Oh, and while you’re at it, could you apologize to the horn players. They play a particularly difficult instrument and a mistake now and then is okay, in fact, it’s normal.
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Themes for Variation

A while back, T.L. Ponick wrote this quirky piece over at the Washington Times, found here also, about the death of classical music (a.k.a. elitist-academic-experiemental-mindless fucks) and, I guess, where to find good music (in movies), because Erich Korngold was good... and he inspired others... and modernism is Hitler.

"...when new music is introduced, concertgoers are turned off by the snarling cacophony that's a legacy of the Second Viennese School. These musical ideologies valued new works in direct proportion to the auditory pain they inflicted. Largely the product of a nihilistic European intelligentsia reeling from the destruction bookened by two world wars, this institutional ugliness has mindlessly possessed at least two generations of American academic composers."

Flumpbdpa! That’s the sound my logic gland just made. It’s also the sound it made when I tried to watch the latest presidential debate. So, hold on, this is might be forced.

Ponick's defending Korngold’s irreverence towards modernity and at the same time decrying the Second Viennese School for their irreverence towards tradition? Is he saying that one is better than the other? If that’s so, doesn’t that imply that the “institutional ugliness” is really a rejection of dogmatic thought? Way to bludgeon your argument with personal scorn, Ponick. Subtract three points.

Add one point. The use of “snarling” is exquisite. But I would have used “mouth-foaming.” It sounds a little crazier and dogmatic. By the way, you don’t need “mindlessly.” Being possessed implies mindlessness. Minus one point.

Contrarily, Korngold ALSO experimented with twelve-tone music, as did Stravinsky, Copland, Barber, Bartok, Britten, Berio, Part, Piston, Schnittke, Shostakovich, Penderecki, Nono, Reynolds, Harrison, Riley, La Mont Young, Rochberg, and Glenn Gould. Glenn Fucking Gould! If he was so darn proud of his late-romantic-ness, then why would he try it out? Minus eighteen pionts.

Before I move on, I’d like to revisit the proposition made in the second sentence:

Level of pain in new music/Level of pain in Romantic music = Relative value for the “mindlessly possessed” (greater pain = greater value)

I could say that, in general, the relative instrumental forces of a modernist orchestra (at least in Korngold’s hay day) is smaller than that of a Mahlerian orchestra. So, by Ponick’s postulate, Romantic music is generally louder and, thus, closer to the audible pain threshold (ca. 120 dB). Minus three points.

Music. (sigh)

"Yet while such composers labored mightily to exterminate listenable music, classically trained professional composers who still longed for money and an audience - including European Jewish composers anxious to escape Hitler's wrath - headed for that capital of decadence, Los Angeles, to try their hand at writing music for motion pictures."

Again with the evil modernists trying to kill everything good and Holy! Sorry, the metaphoric association between Jews and Nazism is nowhere near similar to the underappreciated writer of film music and the “exterminators” of musical ethics. Certainly, Korngold was Jewish and he left Austria to escape almost certain death. Bravo! I am glad and sympathetic for him and his family. But, I find this to be in poor taste; it only advances Polnick’s anti-out-of-the-box tastes (which is fine. I don’t care. It’s just that if you’re gonna write an article tangentially criticizing modernity, then you’d better be able to do so with something other than the old Hitler comparison). But, if you want to go down that road, then do some research. Find out which composers were first banned by the Third Reich, the modernists (who apparently tried to get rid of other composers?).

Just to make Ponick’s sentence more palatable, so we can talk about it without having to mention the Holocaust, let’s reduce the fluff a bit.

“Classical composers who still longed for money and an audience headed for a capital of decadence to write music for motion pictures.”

Well, now. That’s more like it. He is saying that lots of immoral, degenerate, unprincipled people in Los Angeles were willing to pay a lot of money for music that they could listen to while watching a story, like opera, which is why classical composers went there. That makes more sense. Right?

Ponick sums up his argument thusly:

"...it is long past time to recognize Hollywood's greatest film scores as significant milestones in the legitimate classical repertoire. Continued academic snobbery and pointless experimentation only further alienate musical culture from its traditional and popular roots in the unities of dramatic presentation and formal structure. These universally identifiable elements will continue to attract eager audiences now and in the future - even if they have to conceal themselves within musical genres where the snobs will never find them."

I don’t know why I even try. This is only the first post and I already feel like throwing up.

Academic snobbery I accept. Especially those professors with tweed jackets that have those annoying little elbow patches/protectors. But “pointless experimentation?” Just think, if Leopold Mozart never wrote that bird-whistle concerto, someone like Korngold might have and, then, Ponick would be writing about old Leopold instead. Or, if there wasn’t a Beethoven, then there wouldn’t even be any music to write about!

By the way, I picture “dramatic presentation” as if a young paige emphatically bows, flailing one arm in some elegant circle-eight while extending his other arm holding a scroll declaring Korngold as the successor to Beethoven. I digress.

I agree that Korngold is deserving of more attention. In fact, after the recent Mozart anniversary hullabaloo, he received his own festival of sorts. Good. His influence is still present in films today and he earned his legacy. Furthermore, I think that even though film music goes relatively unnoticed, it is worth a second look. There are remarkable things happening.

This blog was conceived as a forum for those of us, who dislike poor writing about music, to respond and dissect articles like this one, that presumably shape the way our culture thinks about, interacts with and purchases music. Hitler references, personal attacks, misinformation, misdirection, misnomers, poor grammar: things that the purveyors of information should not do or possess. I don’t care if a writer dislikes this or that kind of music as long as the information he/she passes along to us is correct or plausible.

Ponick is the guinea pig; there are many, many others who say foolish things.

To wrap up, he says that good musics will have to conceal themselves within musical genres where the snobs will never find them. And good music has both “dramatic presentation” and “formal structure.” I’d be hard pressed to find a piece of any kind of music, be it aleatoric or otherwise, that doesn’t have form in any sense of the word. I offer one whole dollar to someone who can find me a John Cage piece that doesn’t have form. Taken further, a culture who likes bowing paiges and form should go see more movies, because they shouldn’t like anything else (esp. by the mindlessly possessed, who spend their whole lives loving, practicing, learning and trying traditional and new things). Don’t look anywhere, but to your blockbusters like Rocky Balboa and Harry Potter. In other words, nothing should ever change. Minus twenty-five points.
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