I really don't have much else to say,
Sadly that does indeed appear to be the case, from the evidence of what follows, much of which reveals that your entrenchments and obstinacy might be the envy of the average Christian fundamentalist. I'm sorry if that sounds rude, as it is not meant to, as I do realise that it should not be left to stand without justification as to why I say so - which I will now endeavour to give. In what you write, you ignore and/or decline to respond to most of the points made to you and the questions asked of you, preferring instead to repeat your apparent beliefs like a mantra. Let's have a look at what you write now on the subject - and please note that I am wholly prepared to take on board all that you write and then respond to it rather than be conveniently selective about it.
except that the vast responses to my pointing out that the vast majority of people, myself included, find this sort of music repulsive, are proof that there is a great amount of indulgence in intellectualism going on for it's own sake.
I defy you to prove that over-indulgence in any kind of intellectualism is the sole or even principal reason behind most people's dislike of Xenakis's music. Most untrained listeners would not be made aware of any intellectualism in his music merely by listening to it. You write of intellectualism "going on for its own sake", which appears to suggest that you believe that Xenakis worked in such a way as to produce pieces to which the only conceivable and intended response was an intellectual one; I can assure you that any such notion would have been more repulsive to Xenakis than his music is repulsive to you. Who, in any case, is to determine - and how and by what standards - that any intellectual thrust behind a piece of music is or is not "going on for its own sake"? - i.e. that in
Die Kunst der Fuge it's acceptably inherent whereas in
Synaphai it is not; you clearly draw this distinction, yet you omit to tell us by what means you arrive at such a conclusion.
This problem leads us to another issue on which you lightly touch but which you then conveniently avoid - and that is the motivations of the composer. You have written of composers deliberately making music outrageously dissonant as though they do so just to be different or draw attention to that difference; should one assume from that and other similar comments you make that the integrity that I ascribe to Xenakis is something that you would wholeheartedly deny? If so, I would ask again on what specific grounds you would do so.
Yeah, I agree there's an intellectualism behind Bach's and Chopin's music to a degree, but to me it is truly genuine intellectualism, in that the basis for everything they made sounded good without throwing something artificial into it. When these modern guys create music just to thwart the old rules or just to make something as hideous as possible, and then pass it off as a genuine work of art...I don't know. I don't even care. The din of justification of Xenakis's even more hideous din proves my point I think. Nobody writes reams of justification about Chopin. His music just IS good.
"To a degree"?! Are you serious? Again, one does not think immediately or primarily about intellectual disciplines when listening to Bach, Xenakis or Chopin, but just look at what went on in those composers' workshops! Chopin's remarkably early maturity didn't preclude him from making an in-depth study of counterpoint and older music towards the end of his life; Schubert did the same thing, actually - and the music of both composers broadened and deepened as a consequence. I neither know nor care to whom you refer with your vague term "these modern guys", but your stuff about overthrowing rules and making things hideous for the sake of so doing simply does not stand up. Even Xenakis, whose work perhaps has the least obvious connections with the past of any composer in history, did not seek the overthrow of Brahms or the breaking of past "rules" so much as the making of rules that would help him write in the way that he wanted to write. Would you have composers all writing tonal, melodic music along mainly 19th century lines under a belief that deliberately to go against such an aim is to "overthrow rules" and create" hideous din"? In other words, are you genuinely seeking the expressive stagnation of Western music? No one writes "reams of justification" about Xenakis either, although much has indeed been written about the compositional processes and working methods of both Xenakis and Chopin, which is not necessarily the same thing at all.
I used to dislike all modern, atonal, dissonant music. I've warmed up to some of it (and write it, often). I enjoy Charles Ives, Keith Jarrett, Stravinsky,
Excuse me? This is bordering on the risible! Most of the music of those three is tonal! Atonality is usually relative. So is dissonance. All depends to a large extent upon the experiences of the listener and the extent of his/her familiarity with what they are listening to at any given time. I can remember listening to a Mozart piano concerto for the first time when I was about 15 and reacting in a way broadly similar to the "funny modern music" reaction that we've all observed in people; this was because I was wholly unfamiliar with that kind of writing and it sounded strange to me after a diet of music in which the oldest had been the ninth symphony of Mahler...
it isn't the dissonance. It's more where I draw the line. I guess it may be unreasonable of me to suggest that others couldn't draw the line even further from tonality than I have, at Xenakis.
With momentary sanity comes generosity of spirit, fortunately...
But every time I listen I just think: there's nothing for the brain to grab onto here, at all. Maybe that is my failing, I don't know.
Well, I am pleased that at least you DO listen, that you do occasionally think and that you are also prepared to consider the possibility that your reactions may in part be due to a failure of your brain to engage. No one is expecting you necessarily to want to listen to the music of Xenakis - it's certainly not for everyone, but then nor is that of Mozart! All I would ask is that, when you do listen to Xenakis's music, you approach it with no prior prejudices and simply ask yourself afterwards (a) what effect does this music have on me? and (b) what motivated the composer to express his thoughts in this particular way?
I'd like to repeat that yes, I do in fact find that making sounds which strike me as similar to Xenakis, Schoenberg, and others, is remarkably easy compared to writing a really good melody using a 7 tone scale (or perhaps a really good melody using something more dissonant, like polytonality, or pantonality, or whatever else---though I never think about these terms actively when I am writing).
The very fact of your citing Xenakis and Schönberg in juxtaposition reveals the sheer paucity of your thoughts on the music of the past century or so. These two composers were just SO different from one another! - the one embarking on a new and unusual journey almost right from day one and the other heavily steeped European compositional traditions (not for nothing is
Brahms the Progressive by far the largest chapter in Schönberg's book
Style and Idea). Did not Schönberg demonstrate amply his ability both to write long, sweeping tonal melodies and to take Lisztian thematic/motivic transformational processes and Brahmsian form developments to a hitherto unprecedented degree? Do you suppose that Schönberg would have been able, let alone motivated, to develop his system of compsoing using twelve tones (etc.) had he not first been steeped in the traditions of Western tonal music? And what do you make of his composing his Chamber Symphony No. 2 in E flat minor AFTER establishing that system?
If you think that writing "like" Xenakis or Schönberg is comparatively "easy" (not that there'd be any reason to do so other than as some kind of exercise), why was it so hard even for Xenakis and Schönberg?! And why do you bang on so incessantly and insistently about "melody" when it is but one of the constituent parts of music (albeit one of vital and immense importance)? Likewise, what's with this obsession with major and minor scales? - these established themselves over many decades from a time when they were but two of a entire series of modes, so should one assume your trenchant adherence to the notion of the superiority of major and minor modes as indicative that you frown upon medieval and Renaissance music just as much as some "modern" music just because they do not prioritise thes modes?
One of your problems here is evidently that of what you deem to be acceptable and unacceptable musical language; another, which is closely connected to it, appears to be that of what does and does not constitute acceptable musical expression. Here are some questions arsing from this.
Has it not occurred to you that the new linguistic departures over the past 100 years or so have never overthrown, or sought to overthrow, those that have gone before?
Can you cite any composer in the past 100 years who has genuinely and deliberately sought to compose music specifically to replace, rather than enhance, our library of available music?
Have you thought about the rise of equal temperament around 300 years ago which, whilst arguably not quite as different from what had gone before as Schönberg's "system" was from Brahms, say, actually
did come eventually to "replace" what had gone before, in that it became the standard for Western music for many years thereafter?
On the subject of intellectualism, have you ever made an in-depth study of 16th century counterpoint? - if so, you will surely be all too well aware of the immense intellectual disciplines involved in such writing and would accordingly accept that these are in some sense analogous to the discplines in Schönberg's serial procedures.
As to dissonance, what of the grinding dissonance towads the close of Chopin's Scerzo No. 1 in B minor? - a chord containing E#s, F#s and Gs that, not content with pounding it out fortissimo, the composer then repeats eight times just to hammer it home.
And what of the passages in
Tristan und Isolde and, before that, many instances in Chopin from his early piano trio onwards, that threaten not to undermine tonality altogether but certainly to destabilise it?
Are these and other things not all part of an ever-expanding expressive language?
Perhaps if someone were to hear my atonal music they might say: oh you're doing it all wrong, THIS retrograde inversion of your tone row would have sounded JUST RIGHT!, but somehow......I sincerely doubt it.
I doubt it, too. I've never heard any of your music, so I could not make any comment in any case. As you are referring specifically to 12-note serialism here (and that is but one of countless compositional disciplines and procedures that have been followed in the music of the past century or so), Schönberg himself regarded this kind of thing as a means to an end rather than an end in itself, which is how you should also regard it; indeed, were you to regard not only his "methods of composing" but those of all other composers - including "these modern guys" (whoever they are - and are there no gals as well?) as means to an end rather than ends in themslves, you might start to get somewhere and develop your judgemental faculties sensibly.
Best,
Alistair
Topic: Xenakis Piano Concerto "Synaphai"