Of groove and art music

Subject: Of groove and art music
From: Lena
Date: 14 Sep 00 - 02:53 AM

Will I be able to squash all of it in a few periods?!Ok. The other night at the Opera House i saw this concert featuring 'Bang on A Can All Stars' and the Australian chamber orchestra playing 'Black Angels',and other things.It was a while since the last time I heard some contemporary art music.During my teenage/artschool years,I used to listen mainly to experimental or 'contemporary'art music(a torture for the people living with me),and I believe I shifted somehow to folk an year ago.I remember one afternoon I was listening to some music with a friend.He played me some reels from the Encyclopedia Blowzabellica,and I innocently observed:but they all sound the same....what's the point of playing this cute stuff?!
But then i made him listen to some of my favourite stuff,it must have been a Xenakis or even a Luigi Nono(i really don't remember...)thing and he bursted:
What's this?!What's the point of this?!you can't dance on it,you can't stamp your feet,you can't even sing along it!!!
And yes,I couldn't find the point of music without the nature of music itself:groove,or feelings,or any connection.From that time art music sounded a lot like something between"I'm lost"or"See how clever I am at destroying,dissacrating music".And folk,however repetitive I found it in the beginning,was music."Beware,because of all arts,Music is the only one spinning around you...".So,i was quite amazed the other night when I found myself stamping my foot.That stuff was full of concepts,the players were 100% conservatory kids,yet I was stamping my foot and I would have rushed around the Concert Hall for the energy it was giving me.You put the beauty of an art music package and the groove,roots and sense of a folk piece and what you get is great...And I thought about all the folk in 20th century art music,like Ravel's Bolero(a reel going on for 13 minutes...)Stravinsky's rite of Spring,Kodaly,Bartok,up to Maxwell Davies' pieces on Orkneys Folk...
How comes art music composers don't have the guts to mix with folk music or allow some rithm/feelings in their music?!So please mudcatters,tell me something on how you feel about art music.

Subject: RE: Of groove and art music
From: Lena
Date: 14 Sep 00 - 03:30 AM

Now,given the disastrous lack of contribuitions my last postings had,I can bet none is gonna write for this one.

Subject: RE: Of groove and art music
From: The Shambles
Date: 14 Sep 00 - 03:55 AM

You lose.

Well, in a nutshell, I don't feel anything much about it. It is exactly 'feeling' or any relationship with it's roots, surroundings or audience, that is lacking. This generally applies for me, to all 'created on the page' music, including contemporary classical and some jazz.

The European classical musical tradition (music largely scored on a page by one composer), has produced some wonderful music. It has also produced a lot more, not so wonderful music. It has been studied and taught, with the result that, for a lot of people, written and scored music is the only 'proper' music.

Some of those taught in this way have reacted against this body of work in the manner that visual artists have done. Some of the modern pieces of music are the equivalent of exhibitions of dead animals, preserved in formaldehyde. They are making many artistic points but are not really connecting and communicating as effectively, or to as many, as a well composed portrait or a good and simple folk melody.

It would seem that the concert you attended did communicate pretty well. Maybe you could let us know what you think the reason for that was? What enabled the music to come off the page and in to the air between you all, where it belongs?

When English classical composers have mixed with (or stolen from) folk music, it has been received as arranging and improving this 'quaint rustic idiom'. In fairness, I think the composers were aware of the value of the folk music but the class-ridden world that these arrangements were received in to, largely did not. I think that as far as folk music goes, it is something that the English have never recovered from.

Subject: RE: Of groove and art music
From: Lena
Date: 14 Sep 00 - 03:58 AM

As I anticipated from the title,it was the groove,the sheer fullness of feelings,the rithm,the energy.What's the reason for Music for a fond Harmonium communicating so much?!

Subject: RE: Of groove and art music
From: GUEST
Date: 14 Sep 00 - 08:25 AM

Maybe music like Black Angels is a bridge in classical music between one period (which would be???...perhaps something represented by composers like Ives and Arnold Schoenberg's atonal stuff) and another not yet fully realized.

I like Black Angels more for the fact that composer George Crumb was born in West by God Virginia (associated more with coal mines than classical composers) rather than for the scary, screechy nature of the music. Who's responsible for starting this trend towards screechiness, by the way? This barren, apocalyptic soundtrack for the journey into the void?

There's a (Rumanian or Romanian) contemporary composer who took some recordings of folksongs sung by a woman he met in one of the villages and used them as the central theme of a composition. I don't have the reference handy at the moment but I could be bothered to look it up if it sparks some interest.