That would be like saying that boogie woogie artists of the mid 20th century were using non intuitive methods because they used the 12 bar blues style. The composers you mentioned use what I would call traditions, not non-intuitive methods.
Er - no. In saying this, however, I rather suspect that you may be falling (albeit unwittingly) foul of Busoni's barb about tradition as a stultifier - more specifically in the sense that you appear to regard a tradition as something that has always by definition possessed some kind of immutability and immemoriality, whereas in fact every tradition has grown from somewhere rather than having always been there. You seek to draw a distinction between what you call "traditional" and "non-intuitive" ways of working yet, even if one accepts these terms in the way that you use them, it is abundantly self-evident that there is no clear dividing line between the two. I mentioned, for example (although you did not respond) that some of what you call "non-intuitive" phenomena are indeed naturally occurring; I am no mathematician, yet I do know that mathematics is a science developed by humans to account for naturally occurring phenomena rather than for the sake of self-serving intellectual number-crunching. I do accept the premise that it is at least theoretically possible for a composer to allow him/herself to become a slave to procedure and, when this occurs, the results are likely to be counter-intuitive, but let is not forget that there is such a thing as mathematical intuition and that there is accordingly no obvious reason to claim that musical intuition is, in principle, any different; why otherwise would you suppose that so many mathematicians from the present day at least as far back as Pythagoras have been so preoccupied with music?
There's nothing non-intuitive about a fugue, I don't think, in fact it is one of the most intuitive forms of music in existence, because of its self-referential nature. This is especially the case when an entire fugue is based on a catchy melody, then it's like echoing catchiness all over the place.
But here you are partially confusing intuitiveness with catchiness. Fugal procedures are highly disciplined, but those disciples have undergone all manner of transformations to the point that a fugue by a mid-17th century composer and one by Sorabji or Szymanowski are of almost sufficient difference as to be barely recognisable as examples of the same persuasion. Fugues long depended in part upon tonal centre relationships, yet there have also been plenty of 12-tone fugues as well.
Do you suppose that Schönberg abandoned the intuitiveness of his early music (not only the more obviously tonally-oriented pieces but also works such as
Erwartung and
Funf Orchesterstücke) when he became preoccupied with dodecaphonic working? And what of other near-serialist composers such as Skryabin (in his latter years) or Roslavets (in his earlier ones)? You still for some reason seem determined to place what you call "intuitiveness" in one category and working within certain procedural disciplines in another, as though theer can be no possible compatibility between them.
I regard the tradition of fugue, the tradition of 4 part harmony, and perhaps even the tradition of using ABA form and others to be "natural" in a certain sense, since they either rely on self-reference, or some kind of harmonic consistency that can be objectively observed.
None of these things would have seemed particularly "natural" to the average 13th century composer...
At the same time, I don't believe that such "naturalness" means that we shouldn't try to use crazy harmonies, rhythms or forms...I think all is freedom in music.
But one person's craziness is another's normality...
Thus, I do not disparage Xenakis or Cage or others just because they are exploring other methods at all. It is just, the methods they used produced music that does not interest me.
Fair enough, but it does interest others; if what they produced interested no one, that might be quite a different matter.
And examining what little I've been able to learn about their methods, it appears to me there is much less of just "having fun at a keyboard instrument" in their music.
And how much of that is there in Berlioz, or other composers of the past 200 years or so whose keyboard orientation might have been somewhat less than your own?
For now this satisfies me as an explanation for why I don't like their music much. Perhaps I'm biased because I like to "have fun at a keyboard instrument"
Yes, that does seem to be true. Paganini might have substituted the word "violin" had he sought to make a similar statement, but never mind...
and I have so much fun at it, I can't imagine what benefit my own music would acquire by trying to make the rhythms sound like the fibonacci sequence or by sticking spoons and bottle caps into the strings of my piano.
But no one is asking or expecting you to do any such thing! And just because I respect Xenakis and want to listen to some of his works sometimes doesn't in any sense mean that I want to compose music that either sounds like his or explores the same disciplines that he chose to explore.
While the resulting sounds may be interesting to some people, they don't interest me anywhere near as much as music made without any regard to introducing something other than music itself: melody, harmony, rhythm...and above all: FUN (otherwise known as joy, elation, satisfaction, etc.).
Apart from the fact that there's more to life than fun, one person's fun, melody, harmony, rhythm, etc. is another person's - well, you surely get my drift...
Also I would take issue with your suggestion (made elsewhere I believe) that because I say I like "beauty" and "fun" that somehow I don't like music that expresses fear, angst, anger, darkness, etc. Paradoxically, some of the music I like which I feel does express those negative emotions satisfies me in a similar way to the kind that is happy/heroic, etc. I haven't thought all that much about that subject...I would just say I have heard music which expresses feelings of anger/frustration much more convincingly, for me, than Xenakis has.
That is not what I am suggesting. What I do say, however, is that one should try to open one's ears to as wide a variety of musical expression as possible and, in so doing, one's opinions become better formed and more explicable. I am not asking you to be convinced by anything that Xenakis does - merely to accept that others are so, even those who only want to listen to some of his work on occasion. What I think Xenakis has done is expand our horizons of musical expression, just as Bach, Beethoven, Mahler, Schönberg, Shostakovich, Carter and so many others have done; that strikes me as exemplifying the kind of human development which perhaps only music can provide, for our intellectual and emotional capacities are - or rather can and should be - very much more heightened than once they were.
Best,
Alistair
Topic: Hands off Xenakis!