Academic music vs everything else genre!

[nikolas]

There does seem to be an interest in this topic and I thought that I'd start one, since Matt is sleeping atm probably... :P

MY take is that academia alone is stupid. Avant garde is stupid! Close minded people are stupid.

Academia exists in the premises of education, and should stay there. There is much a point to teach on everything there is to know and pressure in order for a student to learn even a little more abuot atonality, techniques and the rest. Emotions as well if you will Nicky.

Then at real life academic approaches have no place at all! And this is where it all goes wrong. Cause after 5-6-7 years of studying you can no longer escape and are locked in an academic premises. Not to mention that most composers also teach, thus making the ties even stronger!

But, we do need to realise that (at least for me) academia, or academic do not frown upon different styles of music, but find them a little OT to what they are teaching, or have troulbe finding the educational value to a country song for example.

You can (on a personal level, always) attach attributes, exactly like an rpg game, on different tracks, and find usefull things, or interesting things if you will in different "places", like maybe a track, whatever genre, may have interesting hamrony, or rythm, or lyrics, or production, or whatever else. Academia will usually not look into lyrics and production for example.

Additionally there is a large portion of the non formal genres (rock-pop-electroinca etc) that are self taught, which is something that academia cannot stand! hehe! Although many of these poeple portrai a great ammount of knowledge to addition to the ability to use this knowledge!

For the record my supervisor does follow more "normal" trends, and is not a composer of ugly music. His music is quite nice actually... :p and he does enjoy Radiohead and other Brittish bands, that he can follow... Even go to concerts... :) He is an exception. But he is dealing (in my case) to a 29 year old guy with purely open mind who's proven to write lots of differnt styles and know what he's doing and why, so there's no reason to treat me the same way he may treat a 19 year old 2nd year undergrad...

There is a big misunderstanding I think... (and huge problems as well)

BTW, I personally think that composing classical music is simply out of date and classical music is dead. Why on earth would anyone write something that could be writen 30-300 years ago? I mean over the past 300 years everything's been writen. Let's write something new... shall we? Cause there is no way to make the success a Bach had, or a Beethoven, or a Ligeti ofr example...

[Composing_automat]

And what about the life outside academia. There are, I quess, about 20000 composers in USA. How many new symphonies were premiered last year? How many symphonies from last 20 years were present the second time or more last year. Or how many concertos? Lot of dead wood and very little innovation. Why?

[nikolas]

MY take is that academia alone is stupid....

Academia exists in the premises of education, and should stay there.

Then at real life academic approaches have no place at all!

BTW, I personally think that composing classical music is simply out of date and classical music is dead. Why on earth would anyone write something that could be writen 30-300 years ago? I mean over the past 300 years everything's been writen. Let's write something new... shall we? Cause there is no way to make the success a Bach had, or a Beethoven, or a Ligeti ofr example...
I think that I did mention what you're saying and I do agree with you. ;)

[Composing_automat]

Could you name some most original young composers in USA? Do such creatures exist? I wouldn't blaim the academia. Really creative people always get loose of their academic diapers.

[nikolas]

Nope, I couldn't name ane American name as I live in London and am Greek ;)

Brittish names... Maybe Tomas Ades could apply here...

Cretive people always get out of their academic dippers I agree.

What exactly are you talking about with 2 posts of 2 sentences each full of questions? I mean what do you mean by your 2nd post really? I didn't blame academia for the circumstances in classical music today! These are 2 seperate things. Academia vs film/pop/rock/coutry/whatever and why on earht is classical music dying slowly (at least in my opinion) and the reason for that is that classical music should not be written anymore (more or less of course and to an extreme). Again, why write like Bach, when Bach already did it?

Can you provide answers? Questioning alone is not helpful (if indeed we are here to help in any cause...)

:)

[JSP]

I think the reason why a person tries to compose like Bach (which could never be done).. is that if he falls short of his goal... this composer would still be damn good!.. However if a person sets their goals to say game composers. The most they could every become would be at that level of proficiency.

Remember, We're nothing more than the sum of our influences... I personally would rather surround my self with the work of Genius than that from modern popularity.

Even The successful artists will always stress upon the importance of studying the masters... hence why the educational system emphasizes this. Schooling can be boring and painful... but it can also be a great foundation.


If asked what is the greatest art ever created.. Most of if was from centuries ago.



My feeling is this.

If you want to be a good artist.. study your contemporaries.
If you want to be a Great artist, study the masters.


Jeff

[Andrew Sigler]

Could you name some most original young composers in USA? Do such creatures exist?

http://www.amc.net/index.html

http://www.composersforum.org/

http://www.ascap.com/concert/

http://counterstreamradio.net/default.asp


This post created in 3.2 seconds with my own mind and fingers

[Sam Fischmann]

I come from an academic world as well, and perhaps my take is a little less cynical.

I certainly think academic music has its place, and on top of that I think lots of techniques developed in this sphere have found their way into pop culture over time... they just show up in a much different context than they did in the academic world, where they have likely been formalized, and due to a brilliant essay by the composer (or if the composer thinks of his/herself as an innovator, a critic or musicologist), contextualized as a natural and progressive step from a lineage of techniques used by very big names.

Just think: where would electronic music be if the academic world gave up in 1900? Film music? Horror film soundtracks ;)? If you want to talk Radiohead, where would "Idioteque" be without the Paul Lansky material (http://www.music.princeton.edu/~paul/mymp3.html check the full mild und leise at the bottom.)

I don't mean in any way to imply that this sort of thing goes one direction, just that it's unhealthy for either 'camp' to be dismissive of the other.

[nikolas]

I know Sam. And I absolutely adore Radiohead! :D

But for me academia as it is percieved by many, should remain in the teaching grounds. After that everyone is free to do exactly what you say. either way everything is a tool and creatvie minds will find a way to use everything...

I mean that academia is connected with educational insitutions and thus problematic if percieved from the point of a student... As far as I know an academy is exactly a school more or less. So academic issues have an education value, or are somewhat detached from real life. There is absolutely no doubt though that what you get from an academy are tools to be used any way possible, and I value any open minded, even avant garde (no matter what I posted earlier as being stupid).

BTW, I find Radiohead to be one of the greatest (if not the greatest) band in the 90s and 00s...

But I will also stand by my comment that I wouldn't do my Phd, was it not for the scholarship! Research in composition is what professionals do anyway. It just feels weird. Not to mention that the whole concept of a PhD (Philosophy Doctorate) feels bizarre to composition and many other music paths as well. I somehow don't value fully the research as taken in most "historical" (musicology for example) PhDs were it seems that it's all reading and commenting. I would, personally, only value Doctorate level studies in science, were it simply makes sense! Experiment, research and comment! The rest lack the experimentation.

but I'm ranting a lot I feel... Just the pressure of my life maybe at this point. I have absolutely no disilusion that what I'm going through now is extremely valuable, in every sense of the way and being who I am, I really hope that I will find a way to use every tool in my hands. :)

[Sam Fischmann]

Nikolas, I see where you're coming from... there's a reason I'm no longer at a university, though sometimes I do miss it. Am a Radiohead fan too. You should hear them on the speakers in East West Studio 2 :D

Perhaps it makes sense if the academy tends to value academically-grown musics over all others. I'd be proud of my children too!

-Sam

[Nathan Allen Pinard]

I'd look at it this way:

If you want to be a good musician, study the masters.

If you want to be a good musician, study the comtemporaries.

If you want to be a great musician, study BOTH.

[stmiller]

The academic composers are needed, even though their music is not often played of appreciated today. People always hated new music, starting in the late 19th century. Mahler commented how the orchestra players would cuss at him on how disgusting his 'noise' was that he composed. There were many political cartoons in Vienna made of Mahler and his 'horrible' music, as well as tons of bad reviews. And now, Mahler symphonies are played and recorded very commonly and are a firm fixture in orchestral literature.

Even late Beethoven critics in Beethoven's last days said his ninth symphony and late string quartets were works done past his prime, and not his best. But today, those are considered his best works, from his 'genius' period as it is referred to today.

So anyways we might be complaining right now that 'oh that Elliott Carter work is really bad/past his prime' whatever. And 50 years from now people will be honoring it as a great work from the 20th century. You never know.

So any academic/contemporary music composers out there: keep writing. Keep stretching the limit and moving forward.

I have lots of comments on this subject, but am holding back from writing many pages. :)

[Counterpoint]

Hi Nikolas, good topic!

There does seem to be an interest in this topic and I thought that I'd start one, since Matt is sleeping atm probably... :P

...ugh... not exactly, I just wish that I was sleeping... ;)

MY take is that academia alone is stupid. Avant garde is stupid! Close minded people are stupid.

I'd disagree with your first two statements... I think academia and avant-garde are both both necessary in the sense that we don't discover new things by staying bound to the rules. I do think that much of the time the result of these experiments is pure nonsense but there is occasionally a fresh idea that does work and is then adopted and refined for the betterment of all.

Personally, I'm not a fan of "indeterminate music" (aka "chance music") because I have a strict belief that "music" is something that has to be structured and meaningful. While some of this stuff might make for interesting aural experiments. You can't really call John Cage's 4'33" a "musical work" because the sound of a confused and gradually agitated audience is just disorganized sounds (an "effect" really). Maybe it can even be defined as an art (someone had to invent the situation after all), but there is no musical element in this.

Something that is kind of neat about "chance music" though is that it can not be recorded. As soon as you make a recording, it becomes something else because all those sounds become "locked" in time and the element of chance (the intent) is gone!

I agree with your third statement though. There is no excuse for closed-mindedness.

Academia exists in the premises of education, and should stay there....

Then at real life academic approaches have no place at all! And this is where it all goes wrong. Cause after 5-6-7 years of studying you can no longer escape and are locked in an academic premises. Not to mention that most composers also teach, thus making the ties even stronger!

Agreed because "Academia" is a learning tool. It's not really intended to be appreciated by the general public but is intended so that the researchers can study it and learn more about how things work.

Disagreed, because in real life you can use all the tools at your disposal to accomplish whatever your goal might be. The atonal techniques migrated over to popular culture a long time ago, even to television and film music -- just listen to some of the background music from the original Star Trek series, or the Twilight Zone, or hordes of other examples (not just in television, either!). Even composers like John Williams (who seems to get frequent flack for being 'unoriginal' around this forum..) spent some time in the academic world. Maybe not enough to "lock them in" as you say, but definitely enough that they should have a good understanding of academia.

But, we do need to realise that (at least for me) academia, or academic do not frown upon different styles of music, but find them a little OT to what they are teaching, or have troulbe finding the educational value to a country song for example.

When I went to school there was still a fairly significant rift between "academic music" and "entertainment music", but I think (and hope) this mentality is slowly going away. There is much to be learned from either side. Note too that many of the "great composers" were either self-taught or drew inspiration from as many sources as they could find. I would speculate that a guy like W.A. Mozart would not have "limited" himself in any way but would have investigated all music to draw on what works and what doesn't work. He experimented and mimicked styles of music from anywhere he travelled.

Academia will usually not look into lyrics and production for example.

Are these things that maybe should be looked into as well though? I mean you can have a great musical work, but people will hate it if it is a bad recording. You could have the greatest melody in the world, but if the lyrics are utter crap then people will still hate it... These elements can be critical to the music in an "entire package" sense, so why should one limit themselves to studying just a subset of the whole?

Additionally there is a large portion of the non formal genres (rock-pop-electroinca etc) that are self taught, which is something that academia cannot stand!...

.. but isn't this interesting as well? That so many respected pop/jazz/rock/etc musicians are mostly self-taught? Granted too, that many 'popular' musicians also took private lessons with great musicians or attended well-reputed music shools. It's interesting beacuse some musicians need to be formally taught the rules, and others just seem to be born with a natural understanding of them. Frequently, the latter will not even be able to explain why something is done a certain way because it just "sounds right" to them.

For the record my supervisor does follow more "normal" trends...

There is a big misunderstanding I think... (and huge problems as well)

Can you tell me where I can hear some of his music (maybe PM me a link if it's an issue to post that here)? :)

That's too bad about the misunderstanding. It seems like you could learn much from one another if only there wasn't that barrier! (And yes, a good professor does learn from their students, though it's a different sort of learning!!)

BTW, I personally think that composing classical music is simply out of date and classical music is dead. Why on earth would anyone write something that could be writen 30-300 years ago? I mean over the past 300 years everything's been writen. Let's write something new... shall we? Cause there is no way to make the success a Bach had, or a Beethoven, or a Ligeti ofr example...

Hmm, did any of the classical composers really "see" the extent of their success? Did they know it would happen? Did the thought even cross their minds? The really sad thing is that so much historic music has been lost since it was really the invention of the printing press and formal notation that gave us the ability to preserve it! How much great music existed before then, that is now forever lost (or that has been unknowingly re-invented for that matter)? We'll never know!!

I don't know... you ask what is the point in composing in the older style? Mostly to learn, I suppose..! Writing something like a fugue and doing as good a job as J.S. Bach would be a real challenge (some might say impossible)... but it might be fun to try and who knows what can happen with the results?

Cheers,

- Matt

[nickysnd]

Everything else, meaning non-Academic music, is Pop music. Now - Pop vs. Classic music? Pop music has hot blood running through its veins - it's a living thing. Remember how much pop music were Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Chopin, Ravel, Stravinsky, etc. borrowing and using? Think Sarabandes, Menuets, Mazurkas, Walzes, Boleros, Ragtimes, folk songs, etc. Think also about Schubert's lieds, and the lied/song influence over the past classic music. Think also how pop dances have continuously shaped the classic music. And now, in Academia, where has all that gone? That's what I find it is missing in contemporary academic music: hot blood running through its veins.

Let's consider this perspective: What music is needed for? Who needs it? What are the causes and purposes that music is need for?

Please take all that follows in double meaning - literally and metaphorically: Music needs air, can't breathe in a vacuum. Can't breathe in open air either. Music is fragile, it needs to be sheltered in a warm enclosed space. Music needs feedback, it needs reverberation. In both the physical and the spiritual space it is living in, music needs to be loved and supported.

Now, I don't like dividing people, but there seem to be two large categories that love and support music: let's call them the Elite and the People. Sheltered within two different spaces, two accordingly different kind of music have evolved: let's call them Classy music and Pop music.

Who are the Elite? - The Church, the Aristocrats, the Bourgeois, and the Academia. The first three, they want music for various purposes and needs, which are quite clear, so I'll skip that. Academia - now there is something that puzzles me. In Academia they are saying they're set to preserve the values of the Classy music of the other three Elite. But Academia itself, what does it need music for? That escapes me. Any thoughts? Also, who are the Academia - the teachers? What is teacher's music? And why they, the teachers in Academia, encourage avantgardish experiments with sounds, while completely forgetting the fundamental emotional component in music?

As for the People, they didn't changed much over the centuries, although their tastes have evolved. What didn't change is People's need to be entertained and to be emotionally move. They need to smile and to weep, and to experience various emotional states. They need fantasy, and what can be more fantastic and other-worldly than music? In the same time, People they don't care much for clever experiments, if those are dry, i.e. emotionally neutral. People are not stupid, as some high-brows say. Clever experiments, if they are not emotionally meaningful, they don't get through, they don't reach the inner space called soul.

It's getting too long already. One last thought: to me, Film music is Pop music at its highest peak. Or better: it is the Himalaya of Pop music.