Originally Posted by: Errikos

Without exception, I can find no raison-d'etre for any of those works; works that despite stemming from different people scattered about the remotest recesses of the planet, they all sound and look the same (they ALL sound and look the same), in terms of intentions, sensibilities, and execution. No nationality, no personality, no character. Orwellian clones that hilariously believe they are expressing themselves, when thousands of others are writing entirely the same stuff (exactly like all the untalented hordes sequencing string ostinati with dreams of Hollywood...)

From personal experience I know that most of them (statistical deduction) couldn't compose a convincing tonal work to save their lives. Most of them are harmonically illiterate beyond the very basics of functional harmony (even university graduates!), and wouldn't know about musical continuity and organicism if it hurled in their faces. Whereas convincing - not great - 'modern' music, is so easy to write for an educated "musician" it's a joke. Great modern music is a very rare gem indeed, but the composers capable of it and the ones I respect, you can tell they could write non-gestural music should they wish to, i.e. they are real musicians.

Thank you for taking the time to shed further light on your position in this matter. I do have somewhat different experiences then those you write about in the first paragraph. At the same time, I can (unfortunately) only fully confirm the experiences you are referring to in the second paragraph. The average level of compositional craftmanship in much of today's university composition classes can imo only be described as abysmal.

(For readers who may be wondering and thinking that the sentence below is hyperbole used to "drive a point home"- it isn't: this is literally true in a considerable number of cases.)

Originally Posted by: Errikos

Most of them are harmonically illiterate beyond the very basics of functional harmony (even university graduates!)

"Without deviation from the norm, progress is not possible."

    Frank Zappa

Originally Posted by: fahl5

Of course I would have enjoyed it much more to hear good and fresh examples of your musical "capablity"  might it be filmmusic, contemporary, traditional, neoromantic, commercial, neoclassical, dodekaphonic, functional, mikrotonal or christmas carols.

I myself at least am sure it would need no further arguments at all if it simply is done well. and presumably we even consent in this point.

Yes, I am eccentric (to say the least) in that I never post anything on the Internet in general. Especially my Christmas Carols!

Originally Posted by: William

... is speaking as a composer frustrated with the various dysfunctions in modern music - i.e., academic championing of atonalism at the cost of everything else including quality, as well as pop music which includes film music composed by pop musicians such as Zimmer or the recent Oscar winner Reznor who is a universe away from what Hollywood composers were in the 1940s - Max Steiner, Erich Korngold, Franz Waxman, Herrmann (whose first film was Citizen Kane!).  All of the aforementioned were brilliant, even genius masters of orchestration, advanced Mahler-Post-Romantic harmony, and extreme Richard Strauss-level orchestral counterpoint  ...

and...

Originally Posted by: goran_tsch

... The average level of compositional craftmanship in much of today's university composition classes can imo only be described as abysmal.

(For readers who may be wondering and thinking that the sentence below is hyperbole used to "drive a point home"- it isn't: this is literally true in a considerable number of cases.)

Originally Posted by: Errikos

Most of them are harmonically illiterate beyond the very basics of functional harmony (even university graduates!)

That is one of the major points that drives me away from the majority of so-called "new works" and their -obligatory these days - introductory notes, where people I know for almost certain are unsurpassed musical charlatans, go on and on about their intricate, complex structures and relationships, in order to initiate us and explicate the otherwise cognitively impenetrable edifices they create. This coming from people I guarantee cannot make heads from tails out of a Bach sequence, and most likely, are just as adept in playing a musical instrument either. Both theory and performance ignorami waving university degrees (or positions!) and living on the cutting edge of musical creation of their era. Hypocricy at its Wuthering highest...

Originally Posted by: noldar12

I was really looking forward to studying 18th century counterpoint.  It was a subject I knew little about, but something, given my interests, that I knew I would find vauable...

The class was taught by the music department's new music prof.  He spent almost the entire semester - when he was there that is (the class only met about 1/2 the scheduled sessions) talking about new music.  I came into class knowing little, I exited the class knowing little (quite a contrast from the "old school" harmony prof who drilled us endlessly).

A few serious general comments:

Given the culture of postmodernism, coupled with Nietzsche and other subsequent philosophers (French deconstructionists in particular), that the noise of so much "modern" work reflects much of where the West, in particular, is at is not a shock.  That the skill levels are declining is not unexpected. 

Most people here and in universities don't care much for 18th century counterpoint, and most wouldn't know there are differences between that and 16th century counterpoint, let alone what those are... In fact, they don't care for anything in music that is actually pretty hard and takes years to learn, let alone master. People claim they are serious about being "composers" of orchestral music - both in and out of academia, however they refuse, or are never required, to build those skills that everybody in the past - even John Cage - did possess to at least an acceptable degree, before they branched out into experimentation. The complexity of modern music 'proper' for the last 100 years (that most guys in film could never fathom, nor do they need to) is directly derived and based on the highest and most intricate achievements in harmony and polyphony over the last 500 years. 

Finally, I don't see much to connect Nietzche and the dreary French post-modernist bunch, although I am far from an expert. I just know that I have enjoyed reading most of Nietzche's work and regretted wasting time on the latter.

noldar, that is a very interesting post and profoundly true about post modernist thought.  I believe Post Modernism originated in valuable observations about the debatable relativity of "truth," "knowledge," etc. but has degenerated into a devaluation of any meaning in any field of endeavor.  A brilliant, massive book called "Madness and Modernism" by Louis Sass, a psychiatrist with wide-ranging erudition in psychology, philosophy, literature and art has pointed out the astonishingly close parallels between schizophrenia and modern - especially post-modern - art, philosophy and literature.  In fact, to most perfectly create a genuinely Modern work of art, one MUST adopt a schizoid frame of mind. 

I hasten to add that many of the works created in this way I really like - works as divergent as de Chirico's great early paintings or one of my favorite films, Resnais' "Last Year at Marienbad" or as Errikos mentioned the great writings of Nietchze whose philosophy prefigures so much of the modern era.  But still,  it is unsettling to think that "to be modern"' is to be mentally ill.  

(Post retracted)

Thank You errikos, that you corrected you last posting. It was definitly right and necessary to do so.

Please dont take the difference between "good" and "better" to easy. "Good" does as I understand it not necessarily needs "Progress" like "better" does. Modernism is as far as I know based on the Idea of progress.

This central aspect seems to me lost since "postmodernism". This difference is at least for me important, because it gives different historic solutions/styles/musical languages their own historical ("relative") justification in "relation" to their own context.

I do not belong to those who only think of something "nihilating" when they hear thatt postmodernism makes values "relative". For me to judge in relation to a certain concret context allows useable positive (relative) judgements which seem to me in a general meaing at least difficult if not simply wrong. At the end of this for me one still has to judge if something is in its own context "good",  And again in my eyes no one needs do be ill or schizoid just to make the difference between different contextes. (For instance to let 18th century be the 18th century, the 20th century the 20th and today again something quite different.)

And yes that is why I personally do not take any offense in the fact that others follow other values than I do. If I would write filmmusic. I presumably would try to use all available technical means to let the music do their job in the certain film, But I am personally not that interested in that what allows me to put my focus more on other things I am more interested in. 

I don't really want to derail the direction of the thread...

Very briefly the connection between Nietzsche and the French Postmondernists has to do with the latter's buidling off of some of Nietzche's positions, especially as it relates to morality, the death of God, and the corresponding death of truth.  Personally, philosophically, I would say "no" to both, but that is an entirely different subject, and one not really suitable for this forum.

In terms of my own compositions (I do not claim to be a "pro"), even without any formal composition training, I came out of college being able to write all kinds of atonal works, serialism, etc., etc.  Could I write (at that point) an actual fugue that worked harmonically?  No.  That is not to say or imply that no "good" atonal works exist.  Penderecki in particular struck me as someone who really knew what he was doing (unlike some others).  The point is, to actually understand how harmony and counterpoint work and compose accordingly takes a degree of effort that I suspect most are just not interested in.

As for Cage, my favorite story about him remains his interest in mushrooms.  He remarked that if he approached his mushroom collecting and eating in the same way he approached his music, he would soon be dead.  One simply can't eat any old mushroom by chance.  IMO, whatever one may think about his music, a cohesive thought-system is not part of the equation.  Of course, postmodernism would debate if any sort of a cohesive thought-system is possible.

To me, some of the "modern" composers do have serious things to say, regardless of whether I "like" their music or not.  Others, and I would put Cage in this camp, even though they are saying things, seem to be selling form rather than substance.

The way you experienced composition teaching, reminds me how,

- Frederic II was not satisfied by Bachs "oldfashioned Fugues,

- Schumann was not satisfied by the "verzopfte" classical Harmonic and formal Cnventions,

- Wagner was tired of Mendelssohn brilliant compositions

- Brahms was tired of Liszts "neudeutsche" chromatic experiments,

- Schoenberg (who wrote one of the best and most comprehensive Theoriy of traditional Harmony) was no longer satisfied by harmonic and melodic conventions of late romantism

and so on......

I think I would be likewise not satisfied, if the dodecaphonic theory and Cages experiments would be all that would be told me when I would have asked for composition-advice.

But honestly: if ever I would compose anything, (I am currently not that much interested in) I would never start doing anything other teach me what I "should" do, but first would care for what I want to do and then search a way to learn all I need to realise what I intend. That is the reason, why I would not give oldfashionteachers that much significance.

I thought I stated that Nietschze was the basis of Post Modernism.   Didn't I say that?  Anyway, he was certainly the greatest philospher of modern times, and his essential critique of intellectualism self-destructing, science reaching an end-point in understanding resulting in total stasis, etc. was then merely developed further by the Post Modernists. 

I myself notice no one else notices my statements about Sass's contention that Post Modernism is the equivalent of artistic schizophrenia.  Though contradictorily, I love a lot of the results of that schizoid tendency.

fahl5:

I am so happy that you managed to read my post before I deleted it, as it was intended for you, and I eventually did not wish for the rest of the forum to be subjected to that kind of message; I have done it in the past and lived to regret it.

However I didn't delete the message because I didn't mean what I said. And I still believe that it is a problem of comprehension (at least I hope it is). I am sure you are very erudite in German but in English the points keep escaping you... There is no shame in that of course, but it is becoming tiresome for me to be consistently misinterpreted and misunderstood, and having to constantly re-write the same things in different ways until I get through. So, on to a more polite post:

You posted a list of great composers chronologically from the past, basically pointing out how one generation succeeded another while rejecting the previous style and introducing a new one. How does that have anything to do with what I have been saying?

Every composer you mention was a consummate master of the "previous" craft, and while seeking new paths of expression, they all employed the rock-solid theoretical foundations they inherited from past generations. Mozart and Beethoven did not employ as much counterpoint as Bach did, but they knew more than enough about it to create their own masterful polyphony. Schoenberg abandoned functional chromaticism for dodecaphony, but the key word here is 'abandoned'. Id est, he was a master of it in the first place. Debussy and Ravel did the same in their own ways, etc. Maybe there are one or two exceptions here and there in an overwhelming majority of rule.

So, bringing back the discussion to a little bit on-topic, I re-iterate (in yet another way), that my condemnation of most YOUNGER "modern" and film composters is that the former hypocritically and conveniently shun tonal relationships and polyphony and jovially don the 'Emperor's new clothes' of complexity and convolution, and the latter litter the fine film-music repertoire by mapping a different kind of music's structure on symphonic writing (dumbing it down mercilessly to their level), and offensively presenting other people's work for their own (see my signature).

Finally on that, I never said that everybody should write tonal music, or WIlliams-like music in film (quite the opposite; cloned Williams I find hilarious). You - and many others in the western world - appear to be confusing the current liberty one has to write for orchestra in any style and idiom they see fit without attracting criticism for that choice (as they would in the past), with the actual right to criticize the execution of that work, for that style or idiom. I won't criticize anyone for writing in a style that is repellant to me, but I know enough about this to be able to say whether someone has written a piece of s*it, in that or other style.

So far as your philosophical musings and beliefs are concerned, remember that they are not universal or correct just because they are more recent. For myself, I am enthusiastically going against the zeitgeistian grain by not being a relativist, but an idealist instead.

Everybody else: I never said that one needs to know 16th century counterpoint to write film-music for God's sake! It was an example mostly directed at academically trained composers, and an example that to be able to write for orchestra convincingly (Herrmann, Jarre, Williams, Mancini, Steiner, Broughton, Bernstein convincingly), you cannot do it no matter how many cookbook 'phrases' and Symphobic chords you buy. And Hans is not a successor of Williams as the latter was say of Tiomkin's. He is a conqueror and a plunderer. None of the habitual passing the torch from 'previous to next' there. Whoever is sequencing loops for orchestra is a) because they very simply cannot do any better, and b) is adding to the general brain damage. And yes, those are my personal views.