Advanced Progressive Music

[lontano]

Greetings everyone. After reading many interesting, sometimes argumentative and misunderstood posts here involving "modernist" (and various nicknames) for the complex nomenclature composers of our day try to, or are forced to, pigeonhole their style of composition, I suggest that, we members of the PianoStreet consider establishing a new Topic devoted to the advancement of musical composition and performance.

In Western Music every musical style evolved from a need to explore what might be just over the horizon of the previous (acceptable contemporary) style of composition. These trends began back in the early days of the Greeks and Egyptians, although there is little concrete evidence of "a score", yet there are a few examples I have heard, and they are interesting, as they seem to be the roots of modes, scales, etc.

Today, to be unique, in the struggle to be "interesting and challenging", we see trends that remove the performer from the composition, psychologically at least, and that needs to be dealt with.

Likewise some composers find that having total mastery of the keyboard (and probably technique of every instrument), endeavor to extend the complexity of their compositions to the most abstract concepts.

Everything flows from this point. This point moves day by day.

I may not have expressed my idea properly, but I hope someone will pick it up and start a new stream devoted toward the composers that started the movement toward advanced abstraction of "current trends" and those who have moved beyond it.

L.

[indutrial]

Based on what I've grown used to reading on this forum, I find myself wondering what, if anything, the current generation of musicians is after in terms of composition and performance. I feel that, more than ever before, the classical music scene is bogged down in its own jaded malaise and is in dire need of some serious new activity of any kind. Thanks to the destructive influence of 'composers' like John Cage, a general lack of quality in music history classes, and good 'ol decadent mental laziness/information-age brainrot, an overwhelming amount of students end up alienated and out-of-touch with music from the most recent generations and resort to the 19th-century comfort zone of tonal, self-righteous music that, irregardless of its pros or cons, appeals to the most base sensibilities amongst classical music appreciators and is easy to engage. If more students were taught to be better music historians and better theorists (whether they end up implementing theory or not), it would at least create a measure of humility that allows them to mentally transcend their stupid gut reactions to things like serial music, polytonalism, and all matter of intellectually-geared artistry.

The situation is much the same for all of the liberal arts. When I was an literature major in school, many of my classmates were the same of indulgent, lousy students. They would follow the curriculum lock-stock-and-barrel, regurgitate enough broad literary-theory ideas to make the teacher feel like they're not worthless, but wouldn't be able to elaborate anything outside of the box. When research projects came around, they would rape and pillage all the Cliff's Notes and Harold Bloom anthologies that the campus had available and the teachers didn't give a f*ck. Most of the latter were just exhausted grad students who barely had enough energy to lift up whatever department-approved text they were pretending to care about.

Students in general need to get their work ethic back. Schools and colleges, regardless of how much money they're primed with, have degenerated into mere obstacles to the wider public eye. Everyone shows up freshmen year with no intention beyond graduating and going to work at XYZ company. Every damned thing in life (especially these days with computers, video games, texting, and all that b.s.) does nothing but head off people's potential to think and self-reflect, making things like education become a nuisance. The end result of this is that musical taste is, as a whole, weak and unadventurous. What sucks even more is when the resultant bad taste starts to attain ascendancy. Why else would anyone in the metal scene listen to uninspired hot-air-balloons like Dragon Force and Dream Theater. Why else would classical fans feel the need to listen to 10 different versions of the Rach 3 before checking out anything about composers like Busoni or Szymanowski. These comfort zones are way too 'enabled' by the overall music scene.

Until discipline and humility return in a meaningful way, I don't think the majority of classical music students will have anything legitimate to say regarding current trends. Most of them don't even have a rational explanation to elucidate the things they do like. Too many of them either indulge in bad taste enough to sh*t all over most of the past century's music or simply do not fully understand the developments that occurred during that time. I'm currently doing my best to learn, but I'm way way WAY off from being able to form a legitimate opinion on where music is going...