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Why does modern classical music suck?
#1

Why does modern classical music suck?

I'm a classically trained string player and still play to this day. I've played in orchestras as a student both in k12 and in college. While I haven't performed in an ensemble in years, I still enjoy going to concerts.

I had the distinct pleasure of hearing a group perform a collection of classical music pieces that were made in the early to mid 20th century.

I'll be quite honest, it was complete trash. The atonal music was horrendous. After sitting through the whole concert, I've now come to believe that most modern classical music is just plain terrible.

Here were a few pieces that were performed:

(Schoenberg quartet)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WcF-LEo2D4I

(Bartok string quartet)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=za9OS7X9scE

This music is absolutely horrendous! Compare it to something from the Romantic period:

Mozart:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4GP5uStDN0o

Beethoven:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WkUsrlDLch8

The music is immediately inviting. It hooks you with a catchy melody and then takes it a step further. Just like modern music.

Any classical music nerds know what I am talking about? It's difficult to talk to musicians about this because for some reason they're the only ones who enjoy the trash that came out of the 20th century.
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#2

Why does modern classical music suck?

Mozart and Beethoven were legendary composers, they're a hard act to follow. Have you ever listened to anything from Stravinsky, particularly his earlier music? If you like Tchaikovsky you likely would enjoy his music more than Schoenberg or Bartok. His music in Rite of Spring contributed to the legendary rioting that happened. It's hard to get ballet viewers to riot [Image: lol.gif]

Schoenberg's style stands almost in direct opposition to Mozart and Beethoven, so I'm not surprised someone who enjoys their music would hate his.

Bartok's stuff is...shit. It's shit.
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#3

Why does modern classical music suck?

(up front nit, this should go into Arts & Letters forum)

I like some of the modernist stuff. Some Bartok, there's actually quite a bit of Hindemith that I like. But you're right, it's gone crazy. It's the same thing in Jazz. The thing is that there's this strong feeling that everything's already been done before, and they want to blaze new ground, so artists in general go down the path of doing the "new" and "experimental".

Part of that is the type of person who's attracted to the music. Blues doesn't really have that problem (though it does with the authenticity of it, that's another topic). "Rock" is so fluid and such a catch-all phrase but the music has evolved a lot. There's also room under the rock umbrella for expression like thrash metal or industrial music which isn't especially pleasing or melodic, but there's room for it. There's some magic point between the insipid popular crap and the atonal bullshit that's the sweet spot. But classical and jazz haven't really picked up the energy that allows other styles to get away with the atonality.
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#4

Why does modern classical music suck?

I used to play an instrument at a very high level when I was much younger. I love chamber music, requiems, and whatever new Hans Zimmer soundtrack is out as well. They are all just so very different from each other. Hard to compare them like that. John Williams vs Mozart, eh.... the times and the technology is just too different to compare them on an equal footing. That's just my opinion on it though.

What about modern pieces actually suck? Can you cite an example exactly and break it down technically? A few guys here like Tuth know their music as well and can provide some take on that as well.

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#5

Why does modern classical music suck?





same old shit, sixes and sevens Shaft...
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#6

Why does modern classical music suck?

Have you ever heard Concierto de Aranjuez? Great piece of music.
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#7

Why does modern classical music suck?

@Lizard

Wow that is nice! I can see why you just dropped that beauty of a bomb in there without a comment. It's very moving. It strikes your heart like this one.





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1 John 4:20 - If anyone says, I love God, and hates (detests, abominates) his brother [in Christ], he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother, whom he has seen, cannot love God, Whom he has not seen.
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#8

Why does modern classical music suck?

Rockhard also has a good point about stuff that has already been done before. Guys like Dvorak, Debussy, Ernst Holtz, etc. did alot with the instruments of their time. They pushed limits pretty hard. Some Dvorak is so difficult to play, some people have a hard time playing it nowadays. There are quite a few examples of pieces like this. With heavyweights like this from the past, it's hard to find new things that have not been covered. Kind of like how modern day rap music has a lack of new subject matter since many have already rhymed almost every possible syllable and covered most subject matters.

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1 John 4:20 - If anyone says, I love God, and hates (detests, abominates) his brother [in Christ], he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother, whom he has seen, cannot love God, Whom he has not seen.
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#9

Why does modern classical music suck?





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Quote: (02-11-2019 05:10 PM)Atlanta Man Wrote:  
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#10

Why does modern classical music suck?

I would put it down to the lack of funding. In past centuries, artists were funded almost entirely by the aristocracy, who were mostly interested in high art. Under today's democratic system, whichever tasteless trash 'the people' prefer (Michael Jackson, The Beatles, Bono, etc.) is what will be produced.

That Dutch chap who butchers classical pieces and plays them in football stadiums is probably better funded than many famous orchestras.
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#11

Why does modern classical music suck?

I know my classical music.

Modern classical music sucks because modern classical composers are talentless.

It takes talent and a trueborn prodigy to compose something beautiful like a composition by Brahms or Mahler, Chopin, Rachmaninoff, Mendelssohn or Dvorak.

It takes none to write an atonal piece of schlop like Schoenberg, Stockhausen, whoever these anonymous useless fucks are - there's a reason no one performs their music.

These "composers" (I use the term lightly) were alive during the time of performers such as Vladimir Horowitz, Fritz Kreisler, Jascha Heifetz, Sergei Rachmaninoff, Josef Hoffman - the greatest soloists of their instruments of all time - and they were shunned like gays. They still are. And it makes sense. Why would someone like Arkady Volodos, Valentina Lisitsa, Marc-Andre Hamelin, or Yundi Li waste their time learning any of this gibberish for an upcoming concert season? When they couldn't possibly cover the entirety of the existing Romantic or Classical or Baroque repertoire? The core works barely leave enough time in a lifetime to explore obscure but worthy composers like Alkan or Faure.

Show me a pianist of high-caliber who would, and I will beat them to within an inch of life right then and there.

The death of classical music as a developing artform actually rather mirrors the twisting of society by feminism. Concepts such as the "Emancipation of the dissonance" put forth by, again, Schoenberg, are almost painfully analogous to the narratives of feminism. They've declared war on the beauty and harmonies of classical music.

Think of the great painters like Monet and van Gogh. They are succeeded by people who do bullshit like shitting on the sidewalk and calling it performance art.

Similarly, we have composers like John Cage producing masterpieces such as this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zY7UK-6aaNA - an orchestra and pianist assembled to sit there and do nothing for 5 minutes. This is his most exemplary work - when he hasn't actually written shit. That's literally the level these modernist composers are operating on. The explanation, "To make the audience think of the music in their own lives using silence", to me, is identical to the brazen performance art explanations like that college chick dragging around the mattress she said she was raped on. They do not view humanity and the human soul and intellect highly. If anything, they have nothing but contempt.

Yes, the 20th century was an amazing time for music overall - it saw the birth and proliferation of jazz, blues, rock and roll, metal, pop culture music - but it was the end of classical music. Which is sad, as it is the progenitor of all those forms of music. The nucleus of classical music has always been the European aristocracy. It existed nowhere else in the world, and no other place in time. That's why there aren't any great composers from Africa, Asia, and precisely one from South America, and there won't be any more to come.

Following the Impressionist era, you have a handful of 20th century composers who each composed one or two worthy works, such as Samuel Barber's Second Concerto for the piano or the iconic Adagio for Strings.

The biggest factor, I think, is that Russia - the single fertile breeding grounds of prodigious talents in the world - was irreparably scarred by the Soviet Union and its musical soul killed along with its aristocracy, from which Rachmaninoff, Scriabin (who was more Romantic than modernist), and Tchaikovsky hailed, and henceforth producing heavily 'industrial music' self-flagellating Soviet composers like Roslavets.

Albeit, I like Nikolai Kapustin, who would be my favorite living composer. This is my favorite etude by him: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fuwAUUbrkxY.

The rest are fit for scores of German expressionist arthouse films that no one will or should watch.
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#12

Why does modern classical music suck?

It's hilarious you say that Cactuscat. After reading more about them, it did seem very similar to the way feminism came about.

The whole concept of atonality is bunk. A meaning without and tone being well tone. Without tone, you have noise which is precisely what most of this music is.
I don't see why modern composers don't try and create pieces today following. The conventions of old.

That john cage stuff is precisely what is wrong with modern classical music. I'm surprised no one booed.
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#13

Why does modern classical music suck?

Quote: (09-16-2014 02:53 PM)frenchie Wrote:  

I'm a classically trained string player and still play to this day. I've played in orchestras as a student both in k12 and in college. While I haven't performed in an ensemble in years, I still enjoy going to concerts.

I had the distinct pleasure of hearing a group perform a collection of classical music pieces that were made in the early to mid 20th century.

I'll be quite honest, it was complete trash. The atonal music was horrendous. After sitting through the whole concert, I've now come to believe that most modern classical music is just plain terrible.

Here were a few pieces that were performed:

(Schoenberg quartet)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WcF-LEo2D4I

(Bartok string quartet)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=za9OS7X9scE

This music is absolutely horrendous! Compare it to something from the Romantic period:

Mozart:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4GP5uStDN0o

Beethoven:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WkUsrlDLch8

The music is immediately inviting. It hooks you with a catchy melody and then takes it a step further. Just like modern music.

Any classical music nerds know what I am talking about? It's difficult to talk to musicians about this because for some reason they're the only ones who enjoy the trash that came out of the 20th century.

Trash that came out of the 20th century? Yikes. That's a bold statement.

It might not be to your liking, but what did you expect, that classical music would forever sound like Beethoven?

Every composer that ever lived pushed the limits of creativity to some degree. Some were timid traditionalists like Mendelssohn, others were revolutionaries like Debussy and Prokofiev.

It took me a long time to enjoy 20th century classical music but once I "got it" it's just as rewarding of a listening experience as Beethoven and Bach, more so in some ways. It all depends on your mood.

I'm at work right now but when I get home I'll compile some favorites. Stravinsky was certainly a 20th century composer, but in my mind the great symphonic tradition ended with his death.

Now I can't imagine living without the works of Shostakovich, Schoenberg, Hindemith, Webern, Ligeti, Bruch, Scriabin, Ralph Vaughn Williams, Rachmaninoff, Holst, Charles Ives, Respighi, Villa-Lobos, Prokofiev, Khachaturian, Elliott Carter, Messiaen, Samuel Barber! how can you make those assertions about 20th century music with Barber's Adagio in the mix?

The only modern composer I think I've never cared for is Pierre Boulez.

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#14

Why does modern classical music suck?

Thanks, TK. Carter's Elegy was his farewell to classical music conceived of in a certain way and it is not a bad farewell at that. It is a beautiful piece.

To answer the question in the OP, the classical tradition had become exhausted and a move in a different direction was necessary in music and it came from the turn to beat and syncopation and the incorporation of elements of black music into the Western tradition. The "modern classical" mode has been a dead end for a long time.

In my opinion, the twentieth century is by far the greatest century in the history of music; the achievements of rock music and of various branches of black music including R&B and rap represent a fundamental advance and heightening of the art.

The classical tradition of the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries was a great and glorious one, but it was limited in scope and emotional range; it lacked the wildness and untrammeled freedom that great art is capable of at its absolute height. The merging of a tradition based on rhythm and beat with the western tradition, and the popularization and -- in some ways though not others -- simplification of the art, allowed for the insane and unprecedented explosion of musical genius between roughly 1960-2000 whose immense oceanic magnitude cannot possibly be understood right now -- we are too close to it in time. Some day human beings will look back on the second half of the 20th century and marvel how so much music of apparently endless inspiration and genius could be created all at the same time, just as we might wonder at the explosion of artistic genius in Renaissance Italy. Between the music and the cinema of the second half of the last century, it will one day be seen as a period that far exceeded the Renaissance in its artistic and creative juices.

That period is over, incidentally -- it has been over for more than a decade now. For various reasons, those creative juices have dried up for the time being, but they have left us with a legacy that can be enjoyed for the rest of our lifetimes and more.

same old shit, sixes and sevens Shaft...
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#15

Why does modern classical music suck?

A couple of things.

CactusCat589 perfectly capture my feelings about all of this. Hence +1 rep for him.

#1. I am disappointed that Veloce thinks a piece of trash like John Cage is actually music.

#2. To lizard of Oz. It is an offence to good taste, to all that is pure, holy and worthy of admiration to think that rap is music. Rap is noise. There is music, and rap isn't it.

This is music: classical/baroque/romantic (2) jazz/soul/blues.

The rest are not worth the toilet paper i used to wipe my arse.

And no, i don't accept the premise that music is in the ear of the listener or any such crap.
.

.
A year from now you will wish you had started today.....May fortune favours the bold.
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#16

Why does modern classical music suck?

Nem, we'll have to agree to disagree here my friend as we do on some other things. [Image: smile.gif]

You might want to edit your post as apparently Veloce no longer wants that name associated with him for various reasons.

same old shit, sixes and sevens Shaft...
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#17

Why does modern classical music suck?

Geez, you guys are talking like all modern composers should be dragged out back and shot for the good of music everywhere.

Yeah, a lot of modern composers suck. That's what happens when a wealthy society starts looking for a fucking message in everything. I wrote an essay about that just last night; often to be taken seriously as an artist, you have to be fighting for social change with your work, or at least pretending to. It's not enough to just create something beautiful for entertainment, or to evoke emotions. So we end up with a bunch of talentless hacks who really are trying to send some retarded message, but they don't have the skill to accomplish it with grace. So they squirt paint out of their cooch from atop stepladders.

There are plenty of talented modern composers still walking the earth. Sure, maybe they're not Mozart or Beethoven, but why would we expect them to be?
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#18

Why does modern classical music suck?

There is an air of aristocracy with classical music, it does not come across as it is the music for the guy on the street. Given even people at the very top of society trying to blend in, the people who put up with it are very pretentious. Especially listening to that instrument known as violin is horrific. Totally trashy. Its a hell lot worse some of the nonsense served up as pop music in this day and age.
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#19

Why does modern classical music suck?

^^^
the crowd are poor judge of taste. They are the great unwashed for a reason. The divine is necessarily loftier than the common.

I remember the joshua bell's experiment at the metro subway station in washington, d.c. ... and i should deny myself and pretend to have the same taste as these hoi polloi?

I don't give a rat's hymen if it is pretentious or not. this is what music is, the rest is a steaming pile of horse manure. and that is final.

On violin, clearly you've never heard of the Jascha Heifetz. Unparalleled brilliance. He is from vilnius, and which is roughly 20 kilometers from a place called "nemencine" in lithuania.

regards,

Nemencine

.
A year from now you will wish you had started today.....May fortune favours the bold.
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#20

Why does modern classical music suck?

Quote: (09-16-2014 05:26 PM)LemonDrink Wrote:  

There is an air of aristocracy with classical music, it does not come across as it is the music for the guy on the street. Given even people at the very top of society trying to blend in, the people who put up with it are very pretentious. Especially listening to that instrument known as violin is horrific. Totally trashy. Its a hell lot worse some of the nonsense served up as pop music in this day and age.

You have some really strange opinions man. First the scotch thread and now this? Incredible.

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#21

Why does modern classical music suck?

Classical music in the broad sense can't die, because by definition it is based on fundamental forms of beauty inherent to human aesthetics. It has nothing to do with time, space or media.

Most people mean orchestral music (violins, etc) based on diatonic modulating forms, but I think Hendrix's 1983 is clearly classical music of the modern era.

It could be a Debussy string quartet, but a peruvian piper playing Shenandoah alone in the mountains is classical music.

You hear the best from 200 years ago because there's been a culling process.

If you think classical music has to follow traditional orchestral instrumentation and diatonic form, of course it will die and not be eternal, because it is bound to a particular historical period, format, and vocabulary. When the ecosystem supporting that dies, that form of the music dies.

But music is an end in itself. Music goes on forever.

"Without music, life would be a mistake."
--Nietzsche
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#22

Why does modern classical music suck?

The 20th century produced some of the greatest music in the Western "classical" (i.e. art music) tradition. Personally, I love Webern, Berg, Stravinsky, Messiaen, Bartok, Ligeti, Copland, Hindemith, and others. The OP's strong visceral reaction strikes me like a teenager taking his first sip of scotch and spitting it out. A better reaction would be, hey, this is really strange, but I will hold my horses for a while, have some humility, and investigate to see if these guys were actually on to something.

If you can actually differentiate between modern composers, then you have made a start. I love Mozart but only tolerate Haydn. And modern composers are much more diverse than in the classical era. They often don't even use the same language. You can't lump Schoenberg in with Cage or Stockhausen. They're not even part of the same era.

Open your ears. A bit of education will help, too. Grab a book on Schoenberg's musical journey, or why Messiaen combined birdsong with Indian rhythms in a piece to the glory of the Catholic god. With amazing results.

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#23

Why does modern classical music suck?

This shit gets very subjective. For example, I loathe the works of Shostakovich. John Cage should be killed with fire and all his works must suffer a similar fate. Side note, when I was a kid, I attended a premier of Cage's performed by the Boston Symphony Orchestra. A quarter of the audience walked out. Another quarter jumped to their feet in a standing ovation. That group of audience members should also be killed with fire. The rest of the audience, including my parents and me, sat in stunned silence. Fucking waste of good symphony tickets that night.

All that being said, I'm a huge fan of Vaugh Williams and others in that category. Holst's Planets is awesome in my mind. Bartok I like. Aaron Copland and Dvorak I like, as well. Again, highly subjective.

The atonal shit can get too much, too fast, too intense. Hey, here's a Vivaldi joke:

"I heard that that Vivaldi composed more than 1,500 concerti."

"No, he composed one concerto 1,500 times."

Did I mention that John Cage's stuff should be burned with fire?
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#24

Why does modern classical music suck?

Quote: (09-16-2014 03:36 PM)CactusCat589 Wrote:  

The death of classical music as a developing artform actually rather mirrors the twisting of society by feminism. Concepts such as the "Emancipation of the dissonance" put forth by, again, Schoenberg, are almost painfully analogous to the narratives of feminism. They've declared war on the beauty and harmonies of classical music.

That is very interesting. I wanted to write something very similar, but I'm not that educated on the topic. It seems to me all the classical arts are lacking. Where is the great works of stone-cutting or classical painting?

The post-modern cultural-marxist world does everything it can to destroy meaning, beauty and passion. The post-modern only tears down, just like feminism and marxism.

A fat girl with sloppy dress is the equivalent of modern art. Claiming to be advanced and modern but in reality is just afraid to pursue beauty because it demands you to invest yourself and risk rejection.
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#25

Why does modern classical music suck?

I actually prefer modern classical way more than Baroque. I just find the shades of mood more interesting and relevant to me.
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