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Almost Too Beautiful (2003)

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Re: Almost Too Beautiful (2003)

#41

Post by martinced »

There's a saying to describe such a performance and the people who do appreciate that kind of 'stuff': artsy fartsy.

I'm sure half of the pleasure is to then talk about how incredible, magnificent and transcendental it was to assist to such a performance. Must make one feel special in NYC.

I also do appreciate the humility in that title: "Almost too beautiful". Sure, we mere mortals can't understand this, because it's too beautiful for us.

Several people have asked if this was a joke... By now I'm honestly beginning to think that HN has been trolled by a ring with sufficient accounts to upvote anything they want on the HN front page :-/

Re: Almost Too Beautiful (2003)

#42

Post by newnewnew »

JasonFruit wrote: post #13

I'm always fascinated by the response of everyday people to music like this. I'm a former professional musician — my degree was in viola performance, and I freelanced for a number of years before I decided paying the rent was important — and my perspective on contemporary music has changed since I ceased actively performing. I think the largest change is that I've become less concerned with interesting music, and mor…

A similar spirit grips every art form as it becomes enveloped by the academy. See poetry that consists of unrelated overheard conversation snippets. Old-fashioned values like theme, meaning, metaphor, rhyme, meter, and plain pleasant-soundingness are thrown out the window in favor of mere novelty.

Re: Almost Too Beautiful (2003)

#43

Post by Tloewald »

cyrus_ wrote: post #31
JasonFruit wrote: post #13

I'm always fascinated by the response of everyday people to music like this. I'm a former professional musician — my degree was in viola performance, and I freelanced for a number of years before I decided paying the rent was important — and my perspective on contemporary music has changed since I ceased actively performing. I think the largest change is that I've become less concerned with interesting music, and mor…

Relevant quote from David Foster Wallace: If you, the writer, succumb to the idea that the audience is too stupid, then there are two pitfalls. Number one is the avant-garde pitfall, where you have the idea that you’re writing for other writers, so you don’t worry about making yourself accessible or relevant. You worry about making it structurally and technically cutting edge: involuted in the right ways, making the…

Well put but insulting to television which, at its best, is well beyond the quality of the kinds of writing he refers to.

Re: Almost Too Beautiful (2003)

#44

Post by Tloewald »

lutusp wrote: post #24
ivancdg wrote: post #15

Morton Feldman (1926-1987) was convinced that he was a major 20th century composer. That point of view put him in the minority. Now, 26 years after his untimely death, people are starting to agree. Classical music-lovers, numb from all of the brutal, post-war contemporary music, are intrigued by this unusually intuitive composer and his tender, obsessive music. Feldman's "late" works are the most remarkable. Often sp…

> Morton Feldman (1926-1987) was convinced that he was a major 20th century composer. That point of view put him in the minority. Now, 26 years after his untimely death, people are starting to agree. It's Béla Bartók all over again. I wonder if there's an unwritten rule in nature that truly creative composers have to die before people recognize the value of their work? A counterexample to this pattern is Philip Glass…

Wouldn't Bach, Beethoven, and Mozart be obvious counterexamples?

Re: Almost Too Beautiful (2003)

#45

Post by unalone »

martinced wrote: post #41

There's a saying to describe such a performance and the people who do appreciate that kind of 'stuff': artsy fartsy. I'm sure half of the pleasure is to then talk about how incredible, magnificent and transcendental it was to assist to such a performance. Must make one feel special in NYC. I also do appreciate the humility in that title: "Almost too beautiful" . Sure, we mere mortals can't understand this, because it…

It's really easy to sneer at anybody trying to talk about something impossible to put into words, any experience which cannot be recreated through language. Yet this is the subject of some of the greatest works of art in every medium.

If you have truly never experienced something that jolted you suddenly and thoroughly into recognizing yourself as a small person in the wake of something large and vast, that's a shame. But I assure you that such experiences exist, and that they are indeed magical.

Re: Almost Too Beautiful (2003)

#46

Post by DenisM »

ivancdg wrote: post #17
zoul wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn’t make much sense to “try Feldman” by listening to excerpts, you have to experience the whole piece if possible. The process of trying to find some meaning in the music and the eventual point of giving up and just accepting it is very interesting. At least that’s my point of view after listening to a live concert of Feldman’s For John Cage (70 minutes).

In my experience it is highly impractical to expect someone to try anything for 70 minutes before deciding if they like it. Some kind of step-wise introduction is more helpful. It's not easy with Feldman, but I am convinced it is possible. Here is a 2 minute excerpt of "Palais de Mari" from 1986 (for solo piano) that may help people decide whether they want to hear more: http://ivancdg.com/music/1.mp3 People have tol…

Not sure about Debussy, but this clip you posted reminds me of Für Alina by Arvo Pärt, 1976.

Re: Almost Too Beautiful (2003)

#47

Post by lutusp »

Tloewald wrote: post #44
lutusp wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Morton Feldman (1926-1987) was convinced that he was a major 20th century composer. That point of view put him in the minority. Now, 26 years after his untimely death, people are starting to agree. It's Béla Bartók all over again. I wonder if there's an unwritten rule in nature that truly creative composers have to die before people recognize the value of their work? A counterexample to this pattern is Philip Glass…

Wouldn't Bach, Beethoven, and Mozart be obvious counterexamples?

I was thinking of modern times, "modern" in the sense that thoughtful music is rare.

Re: Almost Too Beautiful (2003)

#48

Post by ubernostrum »

MichailP wrote: post #8

I never quite understood why music went this way. My take is that, as always, musicians had to have some kind of sponsorship, and it slowly shifted from musician being sponsored by noble family (for example Liszt and Esterhazy) to getting a stipend from some institutions board (for example Arnold Schoenberg who worked as a bank clerk and got his first stipend through intervention of friends). That is why nowadays you…

So, some things happened in the twentieth century. Basically there are two trends that developed, and reinforced each other without necessarily intending to.

One was the disengagement of general audiences from "classical" (for lack of a better term) music. The other was the disengagement of composers from general audiences.

Each group did this, largely for its own reasons, but each side's disengagement only sped up the other's. The result of this is that you have a general audience who is largely ignorant of what was going on in music, and a world of composers who became more and more insular, writing largely for each other and to make increasingly-arcane points about music theory.

This means that when you listen to contemporary classical music, you're A) listening to something that was not written with you in mind as an audience, and B) utterly lacking the background -- the traditions, the movements, the reactions and counter-reactions -- to understand what's going on in the music.

In a broader sense, this happened in basically all the arts, but music is one of the areas where we seem to notice it more often.

Re: Almost Too Beautiful (2003)

#49

Post by derleth »

cyrus_ wrote: post #31
JasonFruit wrote: post #13

I'm always fascinated by the response of everyday people to music like this. I'm a former professional musician — my degree was in viola performance, and I freelanced for a number of years before I decided paying the rent was important — and my perspective on contemporary music has changed since I ceased actively performing. I think the largest change is that I've become less concerned with interesting music, and mor…

Relevant quote from David Foster Wallace: If you, the writer, succumb to the idea that the audience is too stupid, then there are two pitfalls. Number one is the avant-garde pitfall, where you have the idea that you’re writing for other writers, so you don’t worry about making yourself accessible or relevant. You worry about making it structurally and technically cutting edge: involuted in the right ways, making the…

> television on the page

By which he means most novels, I suppose, which, in turn, means it's nothing to do with television. Add to that all of the wonderful programs on television, such as the films on TCM, the serial dramas on AMC, HBO, and PBS, and the better comedies on the major networks, and this becomes puzzling.

Oh. Wait. No, it doesn't. It becomes a relic from an earlier time, the 1950s and the 1960s, primarily, which has been repeated mindlessly down through the decades as it feeds into a certain classist mindset in the kinds of people who read David Foster Wallace. It reassures them that, even if they haven't given to NPR in five years, they're still better than Those People who still watch television.

Re: Almost Too Beautiful (2003)

#50

Post by Tloewald »

lutusp wrote: post #47
Tloewald wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wouldn't Bach, Beethoven, and Mozart be obvious counterexamples?

I was thinking of modern times, "modern" in the sense that thoughtful music is rare.

I suspect that the high concept musicians of our era will not be the ones that are remembered. John Williams or (shudder) Andrew Lloyd Weber perhaps will, and they dodn't need to die to receive recognition. Those unacknowledged geniuses composing difficult music will be obscure footnotes.
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