Home Music Lane

It's all about the music, dude! Sit down, relax and listen to some tunes.

RE: Thanks for the link, but. . .

Music and Information Theory is just an amazing paper. It's been years since I read this stuff, so I'm not up on developments (if any) since then, though I did have a fascinating discussion about it years ago with Jonathan Berger, who drew the distinction between underdetermined music, typical of the romantic era (but not Brhams), and overdetermined music, typical of the baroque and classical periods -- the distinction being the number of musical possibilities, that one is more constrained by form. The distinction is I think akin to the distinction between free and structured verse, in free verse you can use any number of syllables, in structured verse one has to stick to a metrical pattern, so one's word choices are limited, and of course there are structural possibilities that are even more constrained -- rhyme, and various formal schemes, like the Shakespearian sonnet, all of which reduce possibility. At one extreme, he had analyzed the unfinished final fugue of the Art of the Fugue and determined that there were only two possible solutions.

I'll have to look at that summary to refresh my own recollection, don't have time now. I do know that what I read in Emotion and Meaning in Music influences for example my understanding of what Brahms was doing with the movement endings of the first, and many other things, besides. It's just disappeared into the general framework of my understanding, until it's hard to remember what comes from Meyer.

I have to confess that I miss the charm of Mahler. I decided this year to become more familiar with the oevres of some composers for whom I'd never felt much of an affinity, and it paid off wonderfully in some cases, e.g., Wagner -- I'm never going to like the uninspired stretches of the Ring, but now I know where all the great stuff is and that there's much more to it than the overtures, the Ride of the Valkyries, and the other stuff that everyone knows. But I found no more depth in Mahler than I ever had. I'm thinking that that doesn't just have to do with classical vs. romantic or determined vs. underdetermined music -- after all, I love preludes, fantasias, ballets, and other free-form or improvisational works. Rather it has to do with the richness of the skill and intellect that has been applied to a problem. And that isn't just a matter of some kind of global musical ability, but of where a composer's training and affinity take him. It seems to me that if we were to compare Brahms and Tchaikovsky, we'd all say that the former's primary gift was formal and developmental, while the latter's primary gift was melodic, and that both were masters of harmony. And each of them fell down when they attempted to work in the areas in which they were less comfortable. So in a sense, that's my beef with Tchaikovsky -- that he spent too much time working in forms that didn't suit his particular genius. (Some would say the same of Schubert, but Schubert's innate genius was so extraordinary that I don't have the same problem with his developmental difficulties, besides which, I think some of that is that he died at a time when his skill was developing rapidly.)

I've also been reading up this year on what some great composers said about one another -- Google makes that sort of research, which might once have required a musicologist's knowledge, easy. And I think it's a fascinating way of seeing how perceptions differ. Also fun. For example, three statements by Wagner on Brahms:

I know renowned composers you shall meet, today at concert masquerades, in garb of street minstrel, tomorrow in the "Hallelujah" perruke of Handle, the day after as a Jewish tuner-up of Csardas, and later as solemn symphonists, disguised as Number Ten.
[ . . . ]
In our symphonies and that sort of thing all now goes world-distraught and castastrophic; we are gloomy and grim, then mettlesome and daring; we yearn for the fulfilment of youthful dreams; demonic obstacles encompass us; we brood, we even rave; and then the world-ache's tooth is drawn, we laugh and humorously show the world its gaping gum; brisk, sturdy, blunt, Hungarian, or Scotch -- alas, to others dreary.
[ . . . ]
"A certain clammy cast of melody which its creators had transplanted from their heretofore retiring chamber music . . . What had previously been dressed as quintets and the like, was now served up as symphony; little chips of melody, like an infusion of hay and old tea-leaves, with nothing to tell you what you are swallowing but the label 'best,' and all for the acquired taste of world-ache."

So jealous and mean, and yet astute, funny, and compelling.

Tchaikovsky's references to Brahms are also characterized by jealousy, a least initially, but not spitefulness. He studies Brahms, but could never figure him out:

"Brahms's [Violin] Concerto appealed to me just as little as everything else he has written. He is of course a great musician and even a master, but [in his works] there is more mastery than inspiration. Lots of preparations as it were for something, lots of hints that something is going to appear very soon and enchant you, but nothing does come out of it all, except for boredom. His music is not warmed by genuine feeling; it has no poetry; what it has instead is enormous pretension to depth. However, in this depth there is nothing—it's just empty space. For example, let us take the opening of the concerto. It is beautiful as the introduction to something; it is like a splendid pedestal for a column, but the actual column is missing, and, instead, what comes immediately after one pedestal is simply another pedestal. I don't know whether I'm adequately expressing my thoughts, or rather the feeling which Brahms's music instils in me. What I'm trying to get at is that he never actually says anything, and if he does, then he fails to say it completely. His music consists of skilfully pasted-together fragments of something. The overall design lacks distinctiveness, colour, and life. However, I think that quite apart from all these specific criticisms I should above all say that Brahms, as a musical personality, is simply antipathetic to me—I can't stand him. No matter how much he tries, I always remain cold and hostile. This is a purely instinctive reaction."

Or this:

"With regard to Brahms I do not quite agree with Your Highness. In the music of this master (for his mastery can of course not be denied) there is something dry and cold which repels my heart. He has very little melodic inventiveness; his musical thoughts are never spoken out to their conclusion; no sooner has one heard a suggestion of a melodic form that can be easily appreciated, than the latter has already sunk into a whirlpool of meaningless harmonic progressions and modulations. It's just as if this composer had deliberately set himself the task of being unintelligible; what he does is precisely to tease and irritate one's musical feeling. He does not wish to satisfy the latter's needs, he is afraid to speak in a language that reaches the heart. His depth isn't real—elle est voulue [French = 'it is assumed, artificial']—he seems to have decided once and for all that it is necessary to be profound, and it is true that he has a semblance of depth, but only a semblance. His profundity is empty. One can't say that Brahms's music is feeble and insignificant. His style is always elevated; he never chases after outward effects, he is never banal; everything in him is serious and noble, but the most important thing is missing—beauty. It is impossible not to respect Brahms; one cannot fail to bow before the chaste purity of his aspirations; one cannot but marvel at his steadfastness and proud refusal to make the least concession to triumphant Wagnerism, but it is difficult to like him. In my case at any rate, no matter how much I've tried, I simply haven't been able to. By the way, I should, though, make the following reservation: namely, that some of Brahms's works from his early period (for example, his string sextet in B♭ major) do appeal to me infinitely more than his later ones, especially the symphonies, which seem to me incredibly boring and colourless. If it is disagreeable to Your Highness that I have expressed my dislike of Brahms's music in such sharp terms, then pray forgive me. Many Brahmsians (amongst them Bülow) have been telling me that one day I will see the light and begin to appreciate the beauties of his music, which to me are now unattainable, and that is not impossible, since there really have been such cases. Brahms's Deutsches Requiem I hardly know at all. I shall order a copy of the score and set about studying it. Who knows, perhaps there will indeed be a drastic change in my attitude to Brahms?"

http://www.tchaikovsky-research.org/en/people/brahms_johannes.html

Interesting, isn't it? He seems unable to see how those fragments make an emotional and sensible whole, whereas Wagner, for all his antipathy and references to hay, has clearly experienced the emotional effect that Brahms intended. I remember that, when I first heard Brahms, my reaction was the same as Tchaikovsky's, yet like most people I soon caught on. How is it that we ordinary listeners experience the same emotional effects that Wagner did, while Tchaikovsky, a genius, couldn't? The best explanation I've been able to come up with is that Tchaikovsky wasn't exposed to German music in his youth, and so, his genius notwithstanding, he never achieved a native speaker's fluency. For him, it was always a foreign language. But it's just a guess.


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