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NancyLebovitz comments on Making History Available - Less Wrong
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That's a start. The next step is that you have a good bit in common with other people, but also substantial differences. They lived through history as themselves.
As for "America always having existed", I heard somewhat from a book about the geological history of the English Channel. It took a number of sentences to explain that there was a time before there was an England or a France and I was getting impatient, and then I realized that the amount of repetition probably was needed to bring the point home.
A bit of free association.... did you know there was a nation of Burgundy which has been all but forgotten? I found this out from Mary Gentle, whose Ash novels have some intellectual horror so awful that I stopped reading.
N uvfgbevna/nepunrbybtvfg svaqf fbzr irel fgenatr fghss, naq fur'f orggvat ure erchgngvba ba vg.... naq gura nyy gur rivqrapr qvfnccrnef. V unira'g svavfurq ernqvat gur frevrf, ohg vg qvqa'g frrz yvxr n pbairagvbany zlfgrel, jvgu fbzrbar fgrnyvat gur rivqrapr-- zber yvxr ernyvgl fbsgravat naq erivfvat vgfrys.
Actually, sometimes people do make accurate predictions, but they also make a lot of false predictions. The accurate predictions are much more apt to be remembered than the false predictions.
If you want to see a major effort to view past people as being themselves rather than modern people, see Ta-Nahisi-Coate's writings on the Civil War.
I think that this era is the best in general for a lot of people, but there are specific things which were done better in the past. People in the middle ages and the Renaissance were better at dressing up. It's possible that Eastern European Jews before the Nazis were better at producing mathematical geniuses than we are. Was there something about the educational system? Europe before WWI produced classical music so good that no one has been able to compete with it (for classical music, not music in general) since then.
Wait... Define “classical”.
Classical music is the art music produced in, or rooted in, the traditions of Western liturgical and secular music, encompassing a broad period from roughly the 11th century to present times.[1] The central norms of this tradition became codified between 1550 and 1900, which is known as the common practice period.
Then the fact that the best classical music was composed in the West before 1900 is not that surprising, is it? Likewise, I guess the best Irish folk music was composed by the Irish folk, the best African American work songs by African American workers, and so on.
Do we just ignore Neoclassical works? Or does that not count as 'classical'?
The real reason we don't produce classical music like that anymore is arguably because we produce way better music now.
On the contrary the definition (from wikipedia) that you are responding to seems to go out if its way to ensure that they would be included (to the extent that the pieces did, in fact, conform to the same style.)
Oh well then NancyLebovitz's line:
is not correct.
I don't have any particular opinion on the subject. Classical music is ok in moderation and I'll play it myself from time to time (trumpet). But I have absolutely no interest in identifying which pieces belong to which area and how they are ranked by those who consider themselves experts.
After all, anyone with decent taste will tell you that the best classical music has less aesthetic merit than the best Weird Al songs.
I'm not sure I know how to cash out "aesthetic merit", but seeing Al play Yoda live, and in particular seeing him and Jim West duet on accordian and guitar, is a moment of joy unsurpassed by any I've experienced at classical performances.
I saw you advertising the live performance - almost certainly what primed him as the example. I was jealous! :)
Disputed, FYI.
Also, "classical music" is a terrible term, due to collision with the Classical period in music. The proper (and insider-signaling) term is "Western art music".
This is actually something I want to take care to avoid in this particular context. I do, after all, openly rate Weird Al as aesthetically superior to the greatest classical masterpieces. Also: cheap wine is usually better wine, caviar tastes terrible, those hats look stupid, peacock's tails are largely pointless and I've never read Wittgenstein or that book with the whale in it.
(There are other groups that I would of course take efforts to signal insiderhood.)
Maybe instead of insiderhood, you should consider it merely as a signal of non-ignorance, specifically of the fact that "classical" is the name of a historical era.
I didn't realize your aesthetic resources were so scarce as to put them in competition. Personally I think the world has plenty of room for both.
I probably wouldn't care so much about it if it weren't the subject of an opera by the guy who wrote my favorite book.
I quoted the first sentence from wikipedia. That is the definition of classical music that matches what most people - most certainly including Nancy - mean when they say 'classical music'.
I am well aware of the historical era. Declaring that by relaying the common usage definition of 'classical music' I must be ignorant of the classical era is itself a strong signal of being unaware of how human language works.
One group in which I like to signal myself an insider is 'Science'. We still use the word atom for something that can be broken down into protons, neutrons and electrons - and even the latter is a simplification. The relevance should be obvious.
No, it's just that by going along with that common usage you thereby decline to give a strong signal of non-ignorance. "Weak evidence" of ignorance, if you like.
I doubt that the common usage of "classical" preceded the naming of the historical period. In fact I suspect that the former did not become widespread until after it was already (erroneously) perceived that that sort of music was "old" and "over".
But, but the whale book is surely a classic!
Do you really use the same model for judging Genius in France and judging the Waldstein Piano Sonata?
My model of the universe is kinda big but I don't actively try to compartmentalize it because it then I could not answer the question "Hey wedrifid, do you want me to play my Weird Al playlist or the my classical music playlist?". A model so crippled would be strictly inferior.
Not really. You can have different models and still be able to make strict decisions like that.
Especially with Weird Al, considering part of the aesthetic is the fact that it's hilarious. Do you use the same model with Weird Al and Queen? Iron Maiden? Elvis? Do you put those on a strict 1-Dimensional spectrum as well, or do you prefer different things for different times and different purposes? Practically speaking, do you prefer the same music you normally listen to the same music that is the soundtrack to a film?
I'm not convinced you only have one model, and I'm also not convinced that your model actually says that classical music is strictly inferior to weird al.
No, you can't. If you can make distinctions like that then they are in the same model! And your whole point was based around the fact that I was making such a distinction anyway!
That seems a tad disingenuous. That I consider one to have less aesthetic merit than the other does not in any way indicate that I would be unable to make other comparisons between them.
Wow. What can you say to someone if they make that sort of declaration? Maybe:
Just tell me I am unsophisticated, naive, uncool, banal and tasteless or even that my claim about Weird Al superiority is outright offensive. Those are at least a mix of accurate (unsophisticated in this respect) and subjective. Trying to convince me (or even anyone else) that I don't really have the aesthetic ratings that I do is just absurd!
What? Of course you can. If model allows for time and purpose, then you can just say "Weird Al is superior for the current time and purpose to all of classical music." Bam. Done. Everything can be in multiple models but the comparison operator is different.
So in order for Weird Al to be strictly superior to classical music then it must be superior for all times and purposes. So when you watched Star Trek (2009), did you like Giacchino's score, or would you have preferred Weird Al? Do you watch figure skating? If you do, then according to yourself, you would prefer Weird Al over whatever they skate to.
Well if I'm going to contradict you about yourself, I might as well just say it.
Do I have a choice of the different responses? Because I think I'll choose the first one :D
But I'm not doing that. I'm saying you are stating incorrect things about your own tastes. If anything, I would be trying to claim that you are more sophisticated and intelligent than you yourself will admit.
It is somewhat, because it suggests that some of us should have our status lowered for failing to meet an optimization target we weren't even aiming for.
"Not as good as Weird Al!" sounds a bit like "you fail!". Whereas you could instead have said: "with all due respect to the impressive achievements of art composers, my personal interests lead me to want to spend somewhat more of my time enjoying clever parodies of popular songs than exploring the complexities of 'classical masterpieces', however great the latter might be on their own terms."
I'm pretty sure the resident music experts disagree with this.
I should have been clearer that what I meant by good classical music is music which appeals to the general public.
Again, there are Neoclassical works that "the public" love just like "the public" love the old masters. Pulcinella Suite is a direct example that "competes," but really anything from that era of Stravinsky is a great example. Francis Poulenc's work is immensely popular (his clarinet duet and clarinet concerto are particularly good). In fact, directly after WWI is when all this stuff came out because europe couldn't afford large orchestras.
This idea that modern classical music can't be fun and entertaining is just plain strange! Serialism really gives modern music a bad name. People still compose tonal works, and tonal music is not considered "uninteresting."
I beg your pardon...!
There's nothing "bad" about serial music. (Individual works may of course vary in quality.) Not all music needs to be "accessible". You're right to point out that some modern music is, but it's okay if also some isn't. One just cannot expect everyone to be able to keep up indefinitely with increasing musical complexity.
Not even Beethoven is accessible to everybody, it seems.
But not all modern music is inaccessible. In fact a lot of is more accessible than the old masters (I mean come on, The Firebird isn't hard to understand at all). People seem to act as if once serialism came around all composers immediately threw out all ideas of tonality and harmony and that's not true. Many people openly rejected ideas of atonality.
I don't really have anything against serial music. Some of it is pretty cool. But that's not what "modern music" is.
I like to point out this line in particular, and then point to minimalist (and post-minimalist) composers.
Music doesn't have to get necessarily more complex. Composers, like any large group of people, don't agree on anything.
Well wait a minute: you were the one who pointed specifically to serialism as the culprit for the "inaccessible" reputation of "modern music". If you consider minimalists inaccessible also, why didn't you include them in the blame?
No, I don't think minimalists are inaccessible. You suggested that there is "increasing musical complexity," and I was merely pointing out there doesn't necessarily have to be "increasing musical complexity."
I cited increasing musical complexity as the reason why serial music is considered "inaccessible". I didn't say anything about non-"inaccessible" music.
Charles Murray, in Human Accomplishment, uses historiometry (toting up lists of who music experts consider worth mentioning and discussing) to try to rank various figures while accounting for the most obvious problems like recency bias.
In Western music there are 522 figures who make a certain cut (the bottom 5 of those 522: Thomas Simpson, John Hothby, Marbrianus Orto, Joannes Gallus, Mattheus le Maistre). The top figures in order: Beethoven & Mozart, Bach, Wager, Haydn, Handel, Stravinsky, Debussy, Liszt, Schubert, Schumann, Berlioz, Schoenberg, Brahms, Chopin, Monteverdi, Verdi, Mendelssohn, Weber, and Gluck.
I'm not a music person, but the only name I recall here as belonging to the 21st or 20th centuries would be Schoenberg.
(Murray, incidentally, tried to rank Chinese music, but found too little survived - little but the names of whom contemporaries considered great musicians, but not their actual compositions etc.)
Hm, could this be due to a difference in composition writing and publishing practices? That is, did older European compositions survive longer because they were copied more frequently, or (somewhat equivalently) were easier to copy for some reason?
I think much of it may just be relative age combined with poorly developed notation. The golden age of Chinese music was much further back than the golden age of European music - easier to survive 500 years than 2000.
(I don't think Murray draws the connection, but he discusses problems with ranking Greek music: the surviving music tends to simplistic melodies by a single instrument, distinctly unimpressive - yet writers like Plato describe music as one of the most powerful forces in society. Either Plato et al had very low musical standards or what has survived is extremely incomplete/unrepresentative.)
Here are the decades during which three or more top-20 composers lived. The number of hash marks shows how many top-20 composers were alive at some point in that decade.
Is there a relatively simple explanation for the predominance of Germans and Austrians in this period? Obviously you couldn't expect many great Norwegian or Mongolian composers, because of demographical or logistical reasons, but for example I see no Britons and few Frenchmen in the list. Which differences in musical education and culture could have brought relatively similar countries to have such vastly dissimilar results?
My guess is clustering caused by positive feedback, a.k.a, the Milanese Leonardo effect:
Edited to add: Maybe there were specific things about Germany and Austria that caused them to have clusters of heavy hitters, but maybe there are alternate timelines where Great Britain or France lucked into being home to such a cluster.
Right - my question was about what exactly those specific things were. For example, one reason Florence became a greater centre of art than Milan was that it was ruled by a family of socialite bankers (the Medici) whose power came from wealth and prestige, rather than upjumped warlords (the Sforza) who acquired it through skill at arms and dynastic marriages. Another is that Florence had much better access to the marble mines of Carrara, and so on.
Now Mozart, Bach and Beethoven all had two generations of musicians behind them, but consider, say, Haydn. He was the son of villagers who never played an instrument in their lives - yet they recognised his talent so early that at the age of six years they managed to have him apprenticed with the choirmaster. Had he been switched as an infant with a random Marseillais or Londoner boy, his chances of receiving such an early training would have probably dropped like a rock. Was that because France and England had fewer choirs and choirmasters, both to beget little Mozarts and spot little Haydns? Because violins and spinets were more expensive? Because music was considered more of a discipline for older boys, or for girls?
Yes. The period itself is essentially defined that way. That is, Germans and Austrians (and those influenced by them) wrote the history of music, and defined the "core period" as precisely that period when they happened to dominate the scene.
This is, of course, a fully general counter-argument: any time someone points to a cluster, you can say 'well those and those influenced by them wrote the history so of course we see a cluster'.
For those who don't accept this fully general counter-argument, Murray considered precisely this national/linguistic argument about bias and examined sources written in a foreign language - eg. what did the Japanese textbooks have to say about German music? He found that this corrective did change rankings and scores... for literature. pg 486:
To quote his longer discussion in chapter 5:
To be clear, my argument wasn't directed against Murray, but at his sources. I don't doubt that Murray more or less correctly measured what he was trying to measure (whether or not that measurement has whatever significance he attributes to it, I don't know; I haven't read his book).
My real interest is in "debunking" the notion of the "common-practice period"; I would instead prefer to call the period in question the "Germanic period" or something similar. It isn't really a question of quality: personally, I happen to agree that there is something special about Viennese classicism (i.e. Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven) but I wouldn't assign a similar specialness to Pachelbel and Reger while leaving out Gesualdo and Boulez.
ETA: Also, to be clear, my claim isn't that German-and-Austrian-influenced historians unfairly leave out or devalue other composers from the period 1600-1900; it's that they elevate that particular period itself to an unjustifiably high status relative to other periods (which in my view has hindered the development of music theory).
Well, why did non-German historians go along with it, then?
I would agree partially with komponisto.
Except that there were a lot French and Western Europe composers at this time. They were using a different model entirely however (Schenkerian Analysis only covers the German model). It didn't put as much emphasis on the bass as german music does. The German model just seems better (from my standpoint, it seems to actually focus on what the ear naturally focuses on), which made their music better, so they lasted the test of time. The German model then spread to the Western Europe and subsumed everything because their stuff was better.
We've had this discussion before.
People seem to be turning up a little more detail.
There's one new thing I'm very interested in-- a composing prodigy named Jay Greenberg. His Fifth Symphony is available online, and while it's not the best thing ever, I'd say it's a real pleasure and he published it when he was only 14. I see some hope both for the music he's going to write, and for the idea that new classical music can legitimately be accessible and enjoyable for the general public.
This is exactly what I was talking about here. There are (and long have been) tons of composers just like Greenberg. But they never seem to acquire the prestige of the pre-WWI masters.
And I suspect that's because they're not significantly advancing the art beyond what those folks did (and as those folks were doing in their own time). Greenberg's Fifth Symphony is a perfectly nice piece, but there's nothing adventurous about it; it would have been conservative even if it had been written 100 years ago.
Were those tons of composers like Greenberg doing that sort of work at age 14?
Greenberg on the lack of anything really new in classical music. I think this is publicly available--let me know if it isn't.
Tentative hypothesis: people mostly get hooked by melody and rhythm, but classical has been exploring timbre (to the extent that it's exploring anything) for quite a while.
That's not necessarily fair. As I was taught, "nobody composes in a vacuum." Art and Science constantly evolve so you need to learn what came before, which means it will take longer and longer for prodigies to flourish.
Nobody performs in a vacuum either, for obvious reasons. Unless they are performing Mister Holland's Opus.
Some were, of course (even I wrote symphonies at 14, though never published or performed). But what does it matter what age they were, unless you're talking about the ability to generate publicity? If someone's music is considered interesting only because of their age, does that really count?
Unless you mean that the fact that Greenberg wrote such pieces at 14 means that he has great potential for the future; sure, I'll grant that. But then something like the Fifth Symphony should be considered a student exercise, like the inventions and fugues he's probably been required to write in music school. (Who knows, maybe that's exactly how he thinks of it.)
It's been exploring everything, melody and rhythm perhaps above all.
Re-reading Greenberg's article makes me want to compose some classical dubstep.
If he can't find the avant-garde, then that means that either (a) he has completely absorbed the musical contributions of the most advanced composers of today into his subconscious, and thus he himself is the avant-garde, or (b) the level on which he is listening to things is so superficial that only novel surface gimmicks and "effects" qualify as "revolutionary" (in which case, yes, the 20th century probably exhausted that).
His available music indicates that he is not the avant-garde. On the other hand, (b) is an exceedingly common syndrome.