November 19, 2006
Conversation from Flos Carmeli
For my general readers, this might not be interesting, but it is a continuation of a conversation over here with Steven Riddle. I guess the thread is old, because it will not let me post my comment, so here it is, because it is an interesting conversation. You may need to go back and read the conversation to get the full context. The italicized quote is snipped from Mr. Riddle's last salvo.
My impression of classical music post 1950 is that it has tended to mill about itself in the center of the room throwing its dwindling audience to the periphery.
Most classical music performance organizations face dwindling audiences. What I see as a general trend is to shore up the base: early music specialists delve WAY into historically informed performance, realizing that even if they were to go the way of Stockowski, very few from the general public would be interested, and they would only lose the hard-core early music geeks.
Similarly in modern music, which, far from being a collection of dead-end "isms", which was never as much of a problem in music as in painting, is thriving and actually drawing people to concerts. The problem is that it is the same small group of people. Sometimes someone will wander in because of an ensemble's collaboration with a particular pop musician, and sometimes those people will stay, and eventually get bored with the pop performer.
However, that being said, there are two major, thriving music organizations in the Bay Area that consistantly bring in audiences for all sorts of music, from early music to mid-twentieth century serialism, to whatever is brewing at the moment: The San Francisco Symphony and the Oakland East Bay Symphony.
I have even encountered people who swear that they hate modernist music enjoying some pretty abstract stuff.
I don't think that Stockhausen is over-intellectualized, rather he is dense and requires hyper-educated listeners, which are out there. In fact his most difficult stuff is the stuff that wanders out of his rigorous approach into the realm of hippy-esque goofiness. That stuff, even I find unlistenable.
Then there is the case of John Cage, whose music always interests me far more than the theory behind it (which is terribly silly stuff). Sort of like Ornette Coleman, whose theory is incomprehensible, although his music is powerfully interesting stuff.
As to surrealism, are you familiar with the California Post Surrealists? They were an interesting bunch who were all in favor of the exploration of the subconscious, but wanted to structure it within a context of the rational mind. Definitely check out there painting.
Dear Erik,
We probably do--the webmaster manages those things. But now I know and I'll take care of it. Thanks.
shalom,
Steven
Posted by: Steven Riddle at November 21, 2006 1:17 PMI probably should have sent you an email, but I figured that you did that on purpose to prevent old posts from accumulating spam comments.
Posted by: Erik Keilholtz at November 21, 2006 10:45 AMDear Erik,
And oh, thanks for letting me know what happens when an entry slips off the top page. I'll make sure to adjust to keep them there in the future if a conversation is going on. Sorry. I kept waiting for an answer and missed your here until today, somehow.
shalom,
Steven
Posted by: Steven Riddle at November 21, 2006 10:00 AMDear Erik,
My point was that serialism and the other innovations of Classical music have largely alienated the audience base that would have gone to classical concerts. As you point out there is a dwindling audience of die-hards who will go to anything that smacks of classical music because so little of it is available.
That Stockhausen requires a hypereducated audience kind of hits the point home. The vast majority of people have neither the time nor the interest to accommodate this. That is NOT a reflection on Stockhausen, but it does serve to limit his audience and the audience that might be drawn to the music.
I used to go and listen to every new thing that came down the block as well, but that was largely a pretentious pose on my part. It was wonderful to be able to look down my nose at people who didn't read William Burroughs and listen to George Crumb while smoking little black belgian cigarettes that you held between thumb and index-finger and walking around an art-gallery opening that had plastic cups dangling from helium balloons to use as ashtrays. I'm over that phase now. I'm still interested in the music, but I honestly don't see it going anywhere. You're more enthusiastic about it and perhaps have deeper insights into its possibilities than I do and so I defer to your judgment in the matter but I honestly beleive that moderism sounded the death knell for most of the arts in terms of being carried into posterity by popularity.
But I've exhausted the store of opinion I have. And that's all it amounts to. I am frankly, too uneducated to appreciate the work of Stockhausen, and very probably not inclined to educate myself in that direction. I'll flee to the early part of the century and surround myself with my Debussy and Delius and think symbolist thoughts.
But thanks for the wonderful discussion. These are important matters, although seemingly not so, and it is good to speak with one for whom they matter deeply. We will disagree on Stockhausen and on Cage and on Coleman, but we intersect at Xenakis, Ligeti, and Penderecki and perhaps others.
shalom,
Steven
Posted by: Steven Riddle at November 21, 2006 9:58 AM