why modern music is hardly accepted by audience nowadays?

[bach_ko]

what is the problem of musical modernism's minimal impact on the general listening public even though some of the 'masterworks' of twentieth century modernism were composed nearly a hundred years ago?

[faulty_damper]

No one plays it.  And if they do no one wants to hear it.

But mostly because it's drastically different from what most people listen to hence the inability to comprehend it.

And also, those that do play it do so  poorly; they don't make music out of it because they either don't understand the music themselves or are technically unable to play it well.  Who wants to listen to this kind of pianist?  Certainly not I.  It's repulsive.

[thalbergmad]

But mostly because it's drastically different from what most people listen to hence the inability to comprehend it.

I think that is a good explanation. If i cannot whistle something whilst waiting for the bus, i probably would not pay money to go and see it.

I get the impression that this type of music is generally for people with beards, spotty American students and those that like to write long and impressive posts on piano forums.

If wanted to hear music like this i would go to a kiddies xylophone class.

Thal

[tds]

If wanted to hear music like this i would go to a kiddies xylophone class.

Thal

 

[lostinidlewonder]

I think often "modern" music is for the musician, or those who listen to a lot of instrumental music and find great interest in all the different "new" ways of using them. Personally I like music that makes me feel good, I don't like to feel tense, angry or annoyed, which is often the emotions I get when I listen to crazy new age stuff. Sometimes however I catch myself actually feeling like listening to modern music, but those moments are not very common. As a pianist I enjoy to read through obscure music as a technical challenge and just out of curiosity, but whether I would feel encouraged to perform it for public, I couldn't see its application unless you where teaching a class really (but thats just my opinion).

[tds]

this thread will live long-just wait till more people post, and you cant stop it even if you wanted to

[furtwaengler]

I think that is a good explanation. If i cannot whistle something whilst waiting for the bus, i probably would not pay money to go and see it.

I get the impression that this type of music is generally for people with beards, spotty American students and those that like to write long and impressive posts on piano forums.

There are some freaks out there who can whistle Stockhausen's Klavierstücke, but I'm not sure I want to meet those people. But isn't there a huge difference between Stockhausen and Pettersson, Boulez and Shostakovich, Carter and Salonen, and on and on? There is enough variety in modernity to please all, and what's good is applauded and is surviving. It is already being seen that a large number of composers following Webern and Schoenberg's line will be seen as an unfortunate fad and not be remembered (though I'm sure Schoenberg and Webern should be and will be remembered!). Many who have taken Bartok, Stravinsky, Elgar (yep), Strauss and Sibelius as their line of inspiration are seeing more lasting respect.

I have a really nice beard with an even nicer mustache. Thank you very much!

[concerto_love]

maybe because it's sounds weird..? 

[pies]

a

[indutrial]

People don't dig on classical music that much in general, mostly because MTV doesn't have any classical-themed reality shows and because, on average, classical musicians don't go on stage wearing enough bling and designer shoes. It's also hard to pull together the $10-40 ticket price for a piano recital when you've already spent $500 per seat to get your entire family front row at the Bon Jovi concert coming into town in the summer. Why even buy Itunes versions of classical piano music when you can spend your disposable income buying downloadable episodes of Desperate Housewives and Rescue Me to watch on your Ipod for the morning train ride. Why listen to Mozart when your friends are all talking about how amazing the new Coldplay record is.

Besides all of that bullocks, an overwhelming number of the more involved classical music community are too lamed-out to entertain much of anything that threatens their cozy heptatonic scale and its basic harmonic structures. Sprinkle in other conservative tendencies towards anti-intellectualism (which reminds me of right-wing commentators who claim that Jews control Hollywood and so forth), a seemingly limitless appreciation for easily-understandable technicalities (ooohh, fastest Liszt etude ever!!) and it only gets worse. That might be overthinking it, though. I think the widespread disregard for modern music/jazz (yes, jazz is modern music, to any dumbshit(s) who want to attempt that argument again) is mostly a result of teachers jobbing it and using the same bland teaching methods (and repertoire) that was used generations ago. Almost every piano teacher I've ever met is (1.) kind of a soft-spoken and often nervous coward; (2.) a musician who almost never plays out, and the occasional church accompaniment does not count; (3.) a musician who does not compose....at all; (4.) barely has any money or lives with parents at the age of 35+ and above all, (5.) knows almost nothing AT ALL about repertoire outside of their dusty old pedagogical texts (mostly yellow-covered Schirmers volumes and books with titles like "Piano 1B" and "Mel-Bays Guitar 1A for the Small Fry"  ).

I still work part-time as an electric guitar/bass teacher at a music school and I use more real classical repertoire in my teaching than any of the piano, violin, or flute teachers I work alongside. Feels pretty weird considering I'm the only one playing rock instruments. Classical music and jazz are the two big things that I have to use to break guitar players out of the Guitar Hero vortex, and they both work quite well. With most of the other teachers, music after 1900 doesn't seem to exist unless it's popular show-tunes, movie themes, or occasionally...a pop/rock song (yes...most of them suck so much they don't even know a single Beatles song). If I even ask them about Bartok, Schoenberg, even someone far more tonal like Poulenc, Ravel, or even Gershwin (who is sadly more well known because of Crazy For You)...I'm almost always met with blank stares that seem to say "ummm...none of my teachers ever told me about them, so I never heard of them..duhh....." One of the piano teachers didn't even know who Liszt was  I'm not trying to be on a high horse, but this is just a tad in the vein of OUT OF TOUCH.

I think that people disliking modern music is rooted in the whole 'comfort zone' thing. Teachers and parents world-wide take an extremely narrow-minded approach to bringing young people into music. It's all about performance performance performance and no one's ever taught to analyze or appreciate the music they're performing. And I'm sorry, but it's easy to get drunk on 19th century music with all of its pomp and over-the-top beauty. I feel that when you learn to look at music from more than one angle and you start to see shapes and patterns (even in tougher 20th century stuff), your conception of beauty will eventually mature and become more receptive and (gasp) curious. Too many people dive into (or more likely, are exposed to inadvertently) the wrong modern pieces (i.e. stuff by very extremely modern composers like Cage, Xenakis, et al..) too soon and get burned when all they hear is what to them appears to be random notes, overly dissonant harmonies, jagged rhythms, and experimental premises...and they end up running back to the same Beethoven, Chopin and Rachmaninov pieces that they've listened to again and again and becoming more conservative (and more irritating on this forum as one result).

I know that this looks as if I'm playing right into Thal's hands on this one.. but oh well... at least I don't a beard or a spotty complexion. Strangely enough, I like a lot of modern composers but still whistle plenty of Beatles and Elton John songs at the bus stop.

[db05]

I agree with indutrial. On several points.

One of the piano teachers didn't even know who Liszt was 

And that is just... I don't know if I should laugh or cry.

[jaypiano]

Thank you, Indutrial, for basic good sense.  Not to mention what one can only call a HEALTHY philosophical approach to life: not being obliged to say no to something in order to say yes.
Incorporating with equal ease Elton John and Xenakis and Stephen Sondheim and John Adams
and Liszt and Berio is what enriches the banquet of life.  Closing doors due to a severe case of misoneism or misocainea (fear of the new) only limits.  Here here for expansion!

[ahinton]

If i cannot whistle something whilst waiting for the bus, i probably would not pay money to go and see it.

I presume you mean hear it, not see it - and I cannot imagine paying money to listen to anyone whistling while waiting for a bus myself - but what does that have to do with "modern music"?

I get the impression that this type of music is generally for people with beards, spotty American students and those that like to write long and impressive posts on piano forums.

What type of music? What do you personally mean by "modern music"? And what, if anything, gives you the impression that everyone else deems precisely the same repertoire to come under the category of "modern music"? And what of Schönberg, Bruckner, Liszt, Thalberg, Beethoven, Haydn, Bach, Buxtehude, Palestrina, Tallis, Pérotin, Léonin etc., all of whose music was "modern" once - or at the very least it was new at the time of its composition?

If wanted to hear music like this i would go to a kiddies xylophone class.

Again, music "like" what? Music that sounds like a kiddies' xylophone class almost certainly IS that of a kiddies' xylophone class, but only a very small proportion of modern music is scored for multiple xylophones...

Best,

Alistair

[danny elfboy]

Modern music simply exists in a vacuum and has no kind of tie with the living modern culture. Music (unless self-composed for self-listening) has an aggregative, social value.
In all cultures music is about creative expression, tales telling, dancing, group belonging.
This regardless of technical attributes which are completely secondary compared to the emotive impact of music. Thorough man history music has always been a social tool and writing music for the sole purpose of exhibiting technical skills in a cultural and social vacuum with a strong bias against audience expecially if musical uneducated (no one needs to study picture and architecture in other to visit Florence and find extasy and pleasure in the beautiful buildings and paintings) and against other form of musical expression is not only a new thing but never seen anywhere else except modernist accademical music. Not even classical music created such an abyss with society, because while it's true that there was a division between popular music and  borgeous music; classical music has always respected the importance of popular music and the inspiration provided by it. The romantic era already decrease the demarcation between popular and borgeous (or actually middle class)
Of course "modern" music is a retarded term which means exactly nothing.
If a piano student compose a little study for beginners, it is nothing but modern music.
If Avril Lavrigne publishes a new album it is nothing but modern music.
If John Horner composes a new score for a new movie, it is nothing but modern music.
But I guess everyone here knows what it means by "modern" in relation to music composed for orchestra or solo instruments by composers who have an accademic preparation and thorough knowledge of harmony theory, even if unproperly used.

[thalbergmad]

I know that this looks as if I'm playing right into Thal's hands on this one

Not at all, the whole forum knows i am a friggin idiot as much as i knew you were gonna do a long post.

Thal

[thalbergmad]

I presume you mean hear it, not see it

Well, if you went to a concert for instance you would "see it" would you not?

Or would you pay money to go to a concert, sit in a different room and strain your ears to hear the music?

Thal

[indutrial]

Closing doors due to a severe case of misoneism or misocainea (fear of the new) only limits.  Here here for expansion!

It has a lot to do with social anxiety as well. Whether people admit it or not, a lot of the time musicians lose sight of the dividing line between their social standing and their tastes/repertoire.

I'm in no way above this tendency. I've played in the local rock scene for years, and every time a new song is being worked on, myself and the musicians I work with have to come to grips with the idea that a rock audience is very difficult to cater to. When you think of how competitive the overall scene is, you have to realize that, as fun as it may seem, nobody's going to care if you go up there and play ten tons of complex music with really unconventional structures. True, sometimes bands get to do things like this (like Frank Zappa did), but there's always some level of catering to the demands of the audience. But that's the rock music scene, an environment that I would argue has no hope of fully divorcing itself from its nature as art/entertainment. Classical and jazz have pretty much broken off from their original ties with popular culture and have both become self-sustaining artistic communities. Within those genres, tons of composers and performers have clearly made the decision to disregard convention and try new approaches to realizing their artistry to the fullest extent of their imaginations.

Again, it comes back to the educational environments. What I just described about what I see as the prime movers of the independent classical and jazz communities is very often counteracted heavily by the programmes and teaching methods of music schools and private teachers everywhere. A heavy amount of the social anxiety wrapped up in musicianship is obviously a result of the way high schools (at least in America) treat everything. Music = marching band, school orchestra competitions, school choir competitions, conditioning one's self to try out for all-states whatever, after-school jazz-band, and yet more competition in the annual battle-of-the-bands). From the get-go, everything is about playing well in the group. Very few schools offer theory courses and when they do, they spend the whole year preparing for a standardized AP test and no time at all on composition, creativity, or anything that requires individualistic drive. From what I've seen, college programs take this and raise it to the power of 10, creating a massive schedule of rehearsals, courses, extra courses, and leaving little to no time for individual pursuits. Of course, real genius musicians will find ways to circumvent this drudgery and blaze their own path. They always have. I would argue, however, that the drudgery-loaded schedule does a horribly good job of sapping a lot of peoples' potentials as trail-blazing individualized musicians and spits them out of the system as simply well-behaved and jaded musical conservatives who ultimately never make an untoward blip on the radar.

Getting back to taste...a lot of these musicians end up hanging out with nobody except other musicians, most of whom are taking similar programs, playing in similar groups, and attending the same boring music history lectures week by week. Since the music itself is by-and-large a form of drudgery, most of them aren't interested in talking about too much music from outside the prescribed circle (and usually the social interaction is simply geared towards sex, drugs, video-games, and garden variety bullshit). Every time I've sat down with a group of music-school kids and started yacking about composers I like, etc..., I just get a sense that everyone's not only completely tired of music, as is often the case, but also that they are totally disinterested in hearing about anything outside of the stuff they listened to in high school (before they started hating music). Usually that's socially-accepted-yet-painfully-out-of-touch crap like ska music (as I've often encountered in conversations with trombonists and sax players) or jamband crap (which everyone my age was guilty of fawning over in the late 1990s even though the only real reason people cared about it was so that they could smoke weed with their buddies at the show). When classical is involved, it's always the "who?" game unless you luck out and mention a name associated with the player's assigned repertoire. I knew a drummer who played an Albeniz piece arranged for mallets as one of his recital pieces. When I asked him about why he chose such an interesting piece, he said something along the lines of "um....oh, that Spanish crap....that's something my teacher told me to play. I have no clue who the composer was" The performance was very strong technically but incredibly uninspired. I went to another percussionist's recital a few weeks later at the same conservatory, and he cranked out the same piece...just as mechanically...and similarly couldn't carry on any amount of conversation about Albeniz or anything about the piece itself. All I sensed was that these guys were pretty much just doing whatever it took to make their teacher happy and investing little to no real joy in the pursuit of a letter grade. What's even sadder is that nowadays, both of them are just puttering around, drinking too much, occasionally teaching a private lesson or sitting in at some performance with a former acquaintance, and preparing for long, hard careers in the service industry.

[danny elfboy]

You have a very weird concept of what "new" means.
In my opinion everyone is interested in new things otherwise everyone would be listening to only the music of 1999 and they're not. No one is afraid of novelty and I see a lot of people attending concerts with different form of music. I have just been to a whole week of music shows promoted by an cultural association. I saw there people from 12 year old to 102 year old. The first night we had classical music and soundtracks, the second night we had an elvis presley revival, the third night we had a cappella groups, the fourth night we had experimental electronic music, including sounds propagated through caves and traffic noises, the fifth night we have music composed with water, cartoon, glasses, door keys, elium, the sixth night we had a dj playing flicks from 70's and 80's, the seventh night we had medieval ballads, tibetan chants and gregorian madrigals the closing night we had blues and avant-garde jazz.

Everyone liked the variety and also the strange things because they could find something in them. Even those who never heard of Elvis of were not born in the 70's and 80's appreciated the rispective shows and had sparkle in their eyes. The problem is when you have vacuum music, composed for the sole purpose of prentending to be new and different, being shoved down the throat of a paternalized audience by psychotic pseudo-intellectual apparently devoid of human qualities. And people are too smart to outgrow their healthy skepticism and disliking of this intellectual dishonesty.

There's no creative laziness, there's no disinterest, there's no addicton, and there's no fear of the new; it's all in the mind of people who love to play the game of always blaming others.
Actually the pseudo-intellectuals who pretend to be open minded are the most closed minded individuals one can meet and actually the audience is asking a bit more open mindedness, a bit more respect and trust and a bit more of honesty. When music really stimulates people no matter how young or old they are, they never fail to be interested. The incredible partecipation to manifenstations like the Masterprize are a proof of that.

What would happen if directors instead of making honest well-though and directed movies, would begin to make movies that are like an open context between directors, a collage of arbistrary virtuosism for the sake of showing off, random scenes whose only content is the virtuosistic oddness of camera angles, light effects, image distortions? There's a lot of "weird" movie-making out there but as long as people sense creative honesty and a meaning to share with the audience they instinctively gets interested and appreciate it, even when they don't like it; they appreciate the effort.

So it's actually more a matter of creative attitude than of complexity.
Complexity for the sake of it is hirritant and meaningless, complexity as a tool is another story. It's natural to get suspicious and plain sick of pseudo-intellectually, snobbery and internal jokes between workers behind the scenes that only them can understand because they're designed to make sense to no one but them and their competitive needs.

Your idea that only through complexity for the sake of complexity you can be individual, you can be different and you can be progressive is just insulting. As a typical one-sided fanatical you fail to mention that pleasing the teachers, pleasing the sponsors, throwing individuality out of the window, becoming conservative (and snob, and old inside, and presumptuous, and pseudo-intellectual) caring for nothing but competition and saying goodbye to creativity is something happening a lot in the modernism rote music quarters. Your idealization of that form of music and the people composing it and denigration of people composing whatever else music is just plain delusion candy-coating. You're like preaching a fundamentalist musical religion distorting the truth by overrestimating one side and heavily underrestimating the other.

I have no problem admitting there are bad musician everywhere no matter their musical education or style. I also know there are musicians that don't care about style and compose in all the possible styles as long as they feel that's what the music wants to express needs.
I also know there's no better music style, there's no superior music style and there's no salvation for following the right style and deeming all the rest obsolete, old and evil to the point that ridicolous theories must be make up to justify why a lot of musicians chose different paths, made different choices and appreciate other kinds of music and why lot of music composed in the past is still appreciated. This reminds me of fascism, were those not following the fascist dogma were deemed insane; the perfect justification to suffucate rebellion and individual choices. So rather than plain hating and attacking people for making different choices and having different tastes let's just explain what terrible social traumatic events and cultural contexts made them do the wrong thing.

That's plain borderline psychosis, no matter how well dressed with well researched language and educated terms.

[rc]

Well, I'm sure there's a lot of music that's only accessible to people who've studied it.  I suppose that's alright, taken for what it is.

But I can say from experience that I know a lot of people who are extremely apprehensive of anything different from what they're used to.  Not everybody has the sort of curiousity to explore what they're ignorant of.

[danny elfboy]

Well, I'm sure there's a lot of music that's only accessible to people who've studied it.  I suppose that's alright, taken for what it is.

But I can say from experience that I know a lot of people who are extremely apprehensive of anything different from what they're used to.  Not everybody has the sort of curiousity to explore what they're ignorant of.

People has always seeked interesting and stimulating human creations.
The curiosity you're talking about is something which is extremely developed in me and yet I can comprehend totally the instinctive disgust people have for so much presumptuous pompous pseudo-intellectualism in modernism. And music which is only accessible (music is an abstract language so accessibility becomes a rather individual idea) to people who have studied music just doesn't make any sense. It's like an internal joke among friends. It makes sense to them but they would never make it public, they would never publish a book about their internal jokes and my curiosity would never be stimulated by their internal jokes. It's their own silly group code and it doesn't make any sense outside of the only environment it means something: their friendship. I can assure you that when people sense a thorough honest attempt to communicate something to the audience and doesn't smell presumptuous pseudo-intellectualism they're naturally attracted to the most diverse artistic forms.

Also different is whatever thing which is individual. Music of the same style composed by two different composers trying to express different content is different. Same style doens't destroy difference. Difference for the sake of difference as in playing a contest of who can be the most arbitrarily different with nothing to say just something technical to show off is plain irritating. Your idea of "new" and "different" are so limited that you should feel compelled to call the music you're talking about "old" and "usual" since it has been around for a lot of time and have been explited in all possible ways. Limiting so much concepts like new, different and original backfires and make actually a case against your own argument. Open mindedness is actually understanding how strongly malleable those concepts are.

[rc]

People has always seeked interesting and stimulating human creations.
The curiosity you're talking about is something which is extremely developed in me and yet I can comprehend totally the instinctive disgust people have for so much presumptuous pompous pseudo-intellectualism in modernism. And music which is only accessible (music is an abstract language so accessibility becomes a rather individual idea) to people who have studied music just doesn't make any sense. It's like an internal joke among friends. It makes sense to them but they would never make it public, they would never publish a book about their internal jokes and my curiosity would never be stimulated by their internal jokes. It's their own silly group code and it doesn't make any sense outside of the only environment it means something: their friendship. I can assure you that when people sense a thorough honest attempt to communicate something to the audience and doesn't smell presumptuous pseudo-intellectualism they're naturally attracted to the most diverse artistic forms.

Well anything I have to say on the sort of music you describe would be purely speculation, since I don't believe I've ever encountered such a thing.  Either it's been pre-filtered because it's never played, or maybe I have heard it but it didn't leave an impression because by definition I wouldn't have understood it.  Either case, is moot, because such a thing wouldn't register at all on my radar.

Also different is whatever thing which is individual. Music of the same style composed by two different composers trying to express different content is different. Same style doens't destroy difference. Difference for the sake of difference as in playing a contest of who can be the most arbitrarily different with nothing to say just something technical to show off is plain irritating. Your idea of "new" and "different" are so limited that you should feel compelled to call the music you're talking about "old" and "usual" since it has been around for a lot of time and have been explited in all possible ways. Limiting so much concepts like new, different and original backfires and make actually a case against your own argument. Open mindedness is actually understanding how strongly malleable those concepts are.

Now I have no idea where this came from.  My ideas of 'new' and 'different' are limited?  Semantic arguements are annoying, try understanding terms in the context they're used and it's usually not so ambiguous.  Was this sermon even directed at me?

Conclusion: this post was probably useless

[ahinton]

the whole forum knows i am a friggin idiot

Not true; I don't, for starters.

Best,

Alistair (who apologises for the length of this post)

[ahinton]

Well, if you went to a concert for instance you would "see it" would you not?

Of course, but I am assuming that it is the sound, rather than the sight, of this so-called "modern music" that offends and/or otherwise fails to appeal to you.

Best,

Alistair

[thalbergmad]

I was commenting on the thread subject which related to the acceptance by "audience".

Unless one invites 500 people to ones house to sit around the cd player, i thought the thread initiator was referring to concerts.

There have been some excellent intellectual long posts recently.

Thal

[ahinton]

I was commenting on the thread subject which related to the acceptance by "audience".

Unless one invites 500 people to ones house to sit around the cd player, i thought the thread initiator was referring to concerts.

There have been some excellent intellectual long posts recently.

And there I was thinking that you didn't much care for long posts!

As I indicated before, any realistic and meaningful observations on this thread topic have to presume some kind of prior agreement as to what is supposedly meant by "modern music" in the first place. Even on the most improbable assumption that such consensus be achievable, what incontrovertible evidence is there that hardly any concert audience members accept "modern music" nowadays? Were there historical evidence that almost all such performances are usually given before minuscule numbers of people, one inevitable result would have been a severe paring down of public presentations of such repertoire, because such events always cost money - sometimes considerable sums of it - and these costings are enhanced yet further in cases where a commission amount and special preparation of performance material is included; in view of this fact alone, if hardly any audiences can be found to support "modern music" performance, how is it that so much of it is still played in public with audiences in attendance? Do people stay away in their droves, for example, from Henry Wood Promenade Concert programmes in London that include Prom commission premières and or other recently composed works?

Even if the premise implied by the thread topic was based upon fact (which is patently not the case), the situation that would emerge from it would be deeply unhealthy, in that its indefinite continuation would inevitably result in music becoming ever-increasingly remote from us chronologically to the point of its wholesale relegation to museum-piece status.

Best,

Alistair

[chopinmozart7]

the music style changes and you want to try out everything new just like clothes.
classical music is older then modern music,and classical music was modern in around
1700-1800s,
thats why the people who likes classical music are the only one who are smart enough to
understand how good it is., 

[danny elfboy]

the music style changes and you want to try out everything new just like clothes.

Well this sound too consumistic in my opinion.
I don't want to consume music but I want to experience it.
Trying new things is a fashionable concept.
What happens with music is that you feel you might appreciate what a certain composer has to express with his/her music. All the other criteria like leve of complexity, year of production, precise style of the author are irrelevant and nothing but consumption criteria.

[danny elfboy]

Now I have no idea where this came from.  My ideas of 'new' and 'different' are limited?  Semantic arguements are annoying, try understanding terms in the context they're used and it's usually not so ambiguous.

It was not directed at you but the general way those terms are used expecially by those claiming the superiority of certain style of music they insist to call "new" and "different" even if by their own use of these words when judging all the other music, they should acknoledge evne the music they're talking about is old and usual.

[general disarray]

"Art" music, or "classsical" music has never had a massive audience  -- not until, of course, the rise of the middle-class in the 19th century.

Prior to that, the Church and the aristocratic patron constituted the "audience." 

So, a larger audience depends on education.  That occurred in the 19th century and coincided with the technological development of the modern piano -- the "stereophonic" equipment of its day and the first mechanical "amplifier."

The middle class in Germany, in the 19th century, became fanatics for music eduation.  Once again, piano study led the way.  Composition flourished because there was an educated audience of amateur performers.  Almost every household had a piano.  People were without TV and "stereos."  They made music together.  That's greatly diminished these days.  And, I think for that reason, music has beaten a retreat to academia, where the more "intellectualized" exercises in composition have evolved.

Music performance now has serious competitors:  electronic playback equipment and the dominance of video.  Combine this with the lack of education that students, in America at least, receive and you have a poor environment for musical appreciation.  The "elite," once again, are the biggest audience for so-called modern music.  And they would seem to be the more highly educated academics. 

But, then, John Adams, for one, is disproving all of this with very accessible works that audiences are warming to.  Glass, as well, though I'm still not a fan. 

[indutrial]

The middle class in Germany, in the 19th century, became fanatics for music eduation.  Once again, piano study led the way.  Composition flourished because there was an educated audience of amateur performers.  Almost every household had a piano.  People were without TV and "stereos."  They made music together.  That's greatly diminished these days.  And, I think for that reason, music has beaten a retreat to academia, where the more "intellectualized" exercises in composition have evolved.

It's also plainly obvious that parents in the 19th century German household were probably a mite more stringent with their kids about playing the instrument and developing discipline. These days, just as many middle-class households have the piano (and oftentimes guitars and amplifiers), but the parents don't have a frigging clue how to manage things in a way that will make the kid enjoy the instrument and work hard. They hire some frazzled music teacher to come by for 30-60 minutes a week and hand-feed the kid a few pages out of a Mel Bay book, and then forget to make the kid practice until for five days, only to scramble on the last day before the teacher comes back...or they come up with some excuse. I'm dead serious. I've been teaching long enough to realize that, more often than not, the parents are the first to offer me lame excuses as to why the student didn't practice the C major scale I gave them or good forbid, something as hard as the simplified version of Ode to Joy. Parents' ways of bringing up kids just seem very bizarre sometimes. They want to be the kids' best buddies and do whatever it takes to get the responsibilities out of their own hands. In that sense, the music thing just ends up seeming like another extension of the dumb Caucasian parental over-anxiety with 'keeping my kid out of trouble' or, with Asian and Indian parents, yet another dimension of beating the kid down with bald hard work (which often comes in conflict with the poor kid being signed up for multiple sports and too many after-school clubs at the same time).

Of course, this is not unanimous. I've actually taught for a few families where the entire family signed up for lessons, mostly because the parents wanted to be able to play and sing with their children, and that was generally a more productive and fun atmosphere. It's a shame that that type of familial musical interaction is so uncommon these days, replaced by families sitting around the TV watching American Idol and blowing a bunch of cash to go see Hannah Montana and Hilary Duff lip sing at Giants Stadium or whatever.

[momopi]

when you say modern, are you referring to contemporary music (hence, the word modern) or to  the certain period and movement we call Modern?

[thalbergmad]

When i refer to modern, i am talking about the atonal garbage.

I guess to some that is not really modern anymore.

Thal

[healdie]

well speaking periodically Rachmaninoff could be considered a modern composer he died in 1943 and composed many of his great works in the 20th century,

also people could not write like mozart or Beethoven anymore as it would be like writing a book in Shakespereane language it is old fashioned and would not be taken serooiusly by the public

Also the way you gerneralize modern is silly i mean John Williams is a modern composer but most of his stuff is very romantic in it's sound

you cannot compare say Shoernburg to Shostakovich because they have very different sounds Shostakovich is often dissonant but never atonal you should check out the festive overture this is a great piece and harks back to romantiticism and his symphonies are very Mahler esque

[pianisten1989]

I think it's because 'normal' ppl wants to hear music that speaks to feelings, not to the brains.
And modern music, imo, is often quite tough to listen to. It has not much of a melody...

[healdie]

but i find the Harmonic experimentation of Sostakovich and the late romantics Wagner and Mahler creates drama and suspense that i don't find in Mozart, one of my old teachers would turn his nose up and scoff at even the mention of Beethoven thats why i am learning the shostakovich preludes and fugues rather than the Bach ones

[minor9th]

Lack of exposure and blatant idiocy of the general concert-attending audience.

[webern78]

It has not much of a melody...

Sometimes it has no music as well.

[healdie]

my Grandmother took a very similar stance as alot of you, she would dissmiss anything by Stravinsky, Shostakovich or any other modern composer as rubbish hardly worth her time listening too

but i did an experiment i played her SHostakoviches festival overture but i didn't tell her it was by him and i asked her to guess at whom she thought had wrote it her first guess was Wagner

She eventually gave up and she was throughly suprised when i told her it was shostakovich

she never believed that she could like anything written by him

[thalbergmad]

Lack of exposure and blatant idiocy of the general concert-attending audience.

I wonder how we can cure them of this malady.

Perhaps we should buy a page in a national newspaper and copy some of the posts on this thread. I am sure most people would love to read an 85 page thesis on why they are blatant idiots.

Thal

[webern78]

my Grandmother took a very similar stance as alot of you, she would dissmiss anything by Stravinsky, Shostakovich or any other modern composer as rubbish hardly worth her time listening too

but i did an experiment i played her SHostakoviches festival overture but i didn't tell her it was by him and i asked her to guess at whom she thought had wrote it her first guess was Wagner

She eventually gave up and she was throughly suprised when i told her it was shostakovich

she never believed that she could like anything written by him

Women are notorious philistines and usually have no taste, so your example amounts to nothing. Sorry. 

Lack of exposure and blatant idiocy of the general concert-attending audience.

Really. Ok, quick, name one contemporary composer who is as great as Bach, or Beethoven. Perhaps the "general" concert-attending audience (and the less general connoisseurs who may know better but still refuse to accept contemporary music) prefer the classics simply because they wrote better music. After all, i don't see anybody shunning modern composers only to rush at a Moscheles concert, or one by Boccherini. It's Bach that people want, or Mozart or Wagner or Mahler and so forth. That is, people seem to be attracted by greatness, not mere tunefulness, therefore, accusations to the latter really hold no ground whatsoever.

[webern78]

I think it's because 'normal' ppl wants to hear music that speaks to feelings, not to the brains.

More likely that they want both. If emotional gratification is all you need why put up with all the complexity of a Beethoven or a Wagner when the Beatles could do just as well and without any headaches?   

[thalbergmad]

i don't see anybody shunning modern composers only to rush at a Moscheles concert

I would, but i have yet to find one.

Thal

[healdie]

maybe people just need more time, i mean Bachs compositions were not appreciated untill mendelssohn performed his St matthews passion about 70 years later and it took a long time for people to truely get what Beethoven was all about, people acctually laughed at the premier of his 6th symphony,

But i know plenty of people who prefer the modern stuff to the older classics my piano teacher in one of my exams persueded me to do a Bartok piece because he liked it that much and i know he dislikes Bach he says it is too mathmatical, as previously stated one of my old music teachers at school couldn't stand the works of Beethoven but he could play pretty much everything Debussy had written

[aewanko]

what kind of modern music? 20th century?

I do not know why most people do not like Stravinsky, Boulez, Ornstein et al.

They think of it as "noise". They define music as something relaxing.

[eastman_grad]

My personal view is that much of modern music is accessible to an audience that is used to the staples of the classical repertoire. For some reason, however, when we discuss the topic of modern music, it always seems to engender some of the most avant-garde music out there. Perhaps a good place to start, for those fearful of the new, would be with composers who reference the tonal language. I have often heard people express the belief that contemporary classical necessarily means atonal; this is simply false.

Also, one should not be scrutinized if he or she does not like a particular contemporary piece. I often find that the element of snobbism is quite high when so-called "connoisseurs" discuss any piece written in the past 25 years. Let's face it, they are NOT all masterpieces. Also, the constant cries of greatness get tiresome. I think any serious musician knows that a talent on the scale of J.S. Bach, Beethoven, etc. only comes along every hundred years or so. So, perhaps the fault lies with those who put forth an elitist attitude when it comes to the topic of contemporary music.

...just my two cents.

Best,
EG

[webern78]

what kind of modern music? 20th century?

The so called "atonal" crap and derivate, particularly anything after the 60s. Nobody has a problem listening to Stravinsky, or Bartok, to my knowledge at least.

[pies]

The so called "atonal" crap and derivate, particularly anything after the 60s. Nobody has a problem listening to Stravinsky, or Bartok, to my knowledge at least.

Stravinsky composed 'atonal crap'

[cmg]

My personal view is that much of modern music is accessible to an audience that is used to the staples of the classical repertoire. For some reason, however, when we discuss the topic of modern music, it always seems to engender some of the most avant-garde music out there. Perhaps a good place to start, for those fearful of the new, would be with composers who reference the tonal language. I have often heard people express the belief that contemporary classical necessarily means atonal; this is simply false.



Best,
EG

Agreed!  Much contemporary music is tonal and well worth programming.  But, composers such as Sam Barber and George Lloyd, to mention just two, experienced enormous prejudice from the academicians and musical power brokers (such as Boulez) who were promoting "anything-but" tonal music.  Both composers have gone on record citing the discrimination and ridicule they endured during their careers.  Dutilleux is one composer in France who has complained of Boulez's power to blacklist composers who don't share his "aesthetic"."

The irony is that tonal contemporary composers face much more prejudice that those who are "avant-garde." 

[webern78]

Stravinsky composed 'atonal crap'

But that's not what he's most renowned for, at least among the "general" audience.

[indutrial]

Really. Ok, quick, name one contemporary composer who is as great as Bach, or Beethoven. Perhaps the "general" concert-attending audience (and the less general connoisseurs who may know better but still refuse to accept contemporary music) prefer the classics simply because they wrote better music. After all, i don't see anybody shunning modern composers only to rush at a Moscheles concert, or one by Boccherini. It's Bach that people want, or Mozart or Wagner or Mahler and so forth. That is, people seem to be attracted by greatness, not mere tunefulness, therefore, accusations to the latter really hold no ground whatsoever.

Are you seriously still leaning on such a tired and thoroughly debunked notion like "greatness" to qualify this composer against that composer. This argument is completely retarded and full of marshmallow puff. What the hell does it matter what the audience's tastes are? Musicians who prioritize that are either shameless sell-outs or painfully insecure washouts who are scared shitless about (a.) being themselves or (b.) being unloved by others. This whole situation needs a lot more contextualizing. Guys like Bach and Beethoven were, to some extent, firebrands relative to their own time periods' music tastes and expectations. The same is true for an incredible amount of musicians and composers from our own century, ranging from Stravinsky and Bartok forward to Ligeti and Carter and beyond. Modern composers who are basically taking the same intellectual risks as Beethoven and Bach did in their time needn't receive demerits from pessimistic conservative musicians who lack the intellectual depth and artist-to-artist respect to understand that situation. Stop basing arguments on the general audience. The abstract group of brutish assholes I envision is always the type of people who felt the need to start rioting like a bunch of animals at Stravinsky's Rite of Spring premiere. If you want a more recent example of how worthwhile the general public can be, look up video footage of the riots and carnage at Woodstock '99, an event planned for and attended by complete imbeciles who don't deserve cultural enrichment.

The general audience in the classical world is nothing to rely upon either. Most of them completely miss the point of appreciating music and just end up wallowing in a little nest of favorite pieces that they fell in love with during their youth. Most of the people who compose new music and eventually transcend obscurity are those who avoided those horrid mental trappings and dared to try new things, be open to new sounds, etc... The expectation of easy and immediate gratification is a complete aesthetic cop-out if you ask me and is the primary cause behind popular music's deterioration from the talented work in the early 20th century to the stylized multimedia drivel that is seen today. If people in the classical and jazz worlds want to indulge in the same attitudes that turned pop music to sh*t, then that's pretty sad.