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In Reply to: RE: Can YOU read you own source? It says culture, not science [nt] posted by Chris from Lafayette on October 11, 2020 at 11:07:42
What an interesting thread! Who would have thought a photo of a recording of early 20th C classics could trigger such heat.
jadaniel's wise comment on Renaissance choral music is ignored, yet it is impossible to understand or appreciate the music of Schoenberg (or Webern) without that background. Does no one else know the music of Lassus and Palestrina? Perhaps their music is also largely discredited among concert goers these days.
And oldvinyl posts an excellent list of Schoenberg's pieces, most of which are apparently also unknown to those who already despise his music.
Why would composers as disparate as Lehar and Mahler support Schoenberg? Mahler also consulted Freud; does that make his music doubly suspect?
So...on to psychiatry. It's true that talk therapy is not much used these days, as the profession has turned more to medication, prescribing those pills that can make you suddenly go off your nut and murder your wife, as did the great Carlo Gesualdo, Prince of Venosa, another composer largely discredited among concert goers these days. Gesualdo killed both his wife and her lover, and is said to have mutilated their bodies as well. When tried, he was found not guilty, as "royalty has its perks."
As does the ruler of this Court, who may happily shout "Off With Their Heads" as loudly and as often as did an earlier, fictitious, Queen.
When someone sits down to listen intently to Schoenberg, it is not the composer who is being judged, it is the listener.
Yours &c.
Gioseffo
Follow Ups:
However:"jadaniel's wise comment on Renaissance choral music is ignored, yet it is impossible to understand or appreciate the music of Schoenberg (or Webern) without that background. Does no one else know the music of Lassus and Palestrina? Perhaps their music is also largely discredited among concert goers these days."
Perhaps many of the denizens of this board know the music of Lassus and Palestrina much better than you think? And who said their music is discredited?When I think of the inheritor of the mantle of Palestrina in the 20th century, I'm certainly WAY more likely to think of composers like Sibelius (opening of the Sixth Symphony) than Schoenberg. Could you share what you think is so Palestrina-like in Schoenberg's music?
"And oldvinyl posts an excellent list of Schoenberg's pieces, most of which are apparently also unknown to those who already despise his music."
Make assumptions much? Even on the video I posted about, there were performances of many of the pieces which oldvinyl mentions in his post. Again, you're just making assumptions."Why would composers as disparate as Lehar and Mahler support Schoenberg?"
As the video I posted about suggested, Lehar felt sorry for Schoenberg's impoverished circumstances at the time. I don't know Mahler's motivation."Mahler also consulted Freud; does that make his music doubly suspect?"
Perhaps you can tell us? Did somebody here suggest that Mahler's music was suspect?Pills and Gesualdo, etc
Perhaps you can enlighten us as to exactly which pills Gesualdo was taking (which caused him to murder his wife)? In any case, who is discrediting Gesualdo?"When someone sits down to listen intently to Schoenberg, it is not the composer who is being judged, it is the listener."
Sez who?
Edits: 10/13/20
So many questions and comments.....I'll respond to the one most likely to result in more clarity.
"Could you share what you think is so Palestrina-like in Schoenberg's music?"
Composers in the Renaissance wrote complex melodic polyphony. Paired voices in imitation was a common device, whereby two voices imitated each other singing one melodic idea, and another pair concurrently imitated each other with a second melodic idea. The emphasis was on the horizontal or melodic relationship of the voices; the resulting vertical 'chords' were controlled to a degree, but not ordered.
This is in contrast to music of the common practice period, where tonal harmony was achieved through the ordering of chords.
In the Renaissance, incidental vertical (harmonic) dissonance could occur as a result of the exact melodic imitation, and was accepted. It is even possible that the practice of musica ficta resulted in a shifting chromaticism throughout a performance. https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Musica_ficta
This was examined by Lowinsky in his "The Secret Chromatic Art in the Netherlands Motet".
Imitation in the music of Lassus and Palestrina could be direct or by inversion, or even by retrograde inversion. The first song in Lassus' "Cantiones Duarum Vocum" opens with the lower voice singing D C# D, imitated by the upper voice singing A Bb A, the melodic inversion. In song #2, the first three notes are imitated directly, the next four are imitated in retrograde inversion, both backwards and upside down.
These techniques resulted in works of magnificent melodic unity.
Schoenberg went back to these principles of musical organization. His tone rows were also used in inversion, retrograde and retrograde inversion. Schoenberg sometimes composed with symmetrical rows which resulted in, for example, the retrograde being the same as the inversion, all for the sake of musical unity. The melodic relationship of the voices took precedence over the vertical, but that too was controlled by ear, as in the Renaissance. His student, Webern, had written his thesis on the music of Heinrich Isaac, and specifically referenced the Netherlandish Renaissance composers in a series of lectures he gave on the new music.
I have gone into such detail to avoid the accusation of being fond of the music but uncertain about the notes.
Thanks for going into detail and spelling everything out.
I happen to enjoy Renaissance and other early music. My record collection has lots of the French Harmonia Mundi, DGG Archiv, and EMI Reflexe series that recorded Orlando di Lasso (Orlandus Lassus), Josquin des Prez, Michael Praetorius, Byrd, Monteverdi, Tallis, etc.
Earlier composers include Hildegard of Bingen, Martin Codax, Pierre de La Rue, Francesco Landini, Guillaume de Machaut, Jacob Obrecht, Johannes Ockeghem.
For me, this type of music requires patience to relax and let the music in. It invokes an internal mood of spaciousness and moves and morphs slowly in form. A lot of modern music strikes me the same way - I have to be patient and open to listening to it. It won't carry me off like a Schubert tune or sweep me away in Mahlerian drama.
While the mere mention of harpsichord or fortepiano on this forum raises some dust, imagine what the mention of gamba, lute, theorbo, hurdy-gurdy or oud would raise!
Enjoy the music.
And of course, even the hippies were into Landini. ;-)
View YouTube Video
fagot or fagott aka bassoon
Enjoy the music.
modernista ... !!!
right after the Speculum Musicae finishes.
Enjoy the music.
enjoy! I like Blackmore's Night only to the extent that I can imagine people with coconuts prancing around to make galloping sounds on a budget
regards,
Always something new to hear.
Will have to check out the Andreas Scholl version, his voice is perfect for that.
Enjoy the music.
"In the Renaissance, incidental vertical (harmonic) dissonance could occur as a result of the exact melodic imitation, and was accepted."
Indeed, but incidental vertical dissonance (especially when the voices are moving in contrary motion) also occurs in music of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries too - and nobody needed Schoenberg to introduce a more or less continuous dissonance which was anything but incidental! In fact, the dissonance was critical to further Schoenberg's aim of destroying any sense of a key.
And BTW, I appreciate your going into the detail that you did - I certainly won't be accusing you of being "uncertain about the notes" - at least not in this thread! ;-)
And remember: even a queen is entitled to her opinion!
You have intimated another parallel between Renaissance composers and Schoenberg; both controlled the vertical aspect of their music through avoidance. In the Renaissance, they avoided most dissonance, and Schoenberg avoided any vertical sonority that would imply tonality.
This does result in, as you say, pretty much a continuous dissonant texture in Schoenberg's atonal and serial works. He did say that there was plenty of good music still to be written in the key of C, and from time to time went back to writing tonal music.
But dissonance is a tricky thing. The interval of a third was at one time considered dissonant. Here is a quick experiment to try:
Play on the piano, detached and fairly quickly, Eb D Db C, descending, and ending on middle C. A small segment of the chromatic scale, nothing special, rather banal, and used frequently in tonal music, especially for the piano.
Now play the same pitches in the same order and the same way, ascending, and ending on the C above middle C.
Whoa! Schoenberg, get thee hence!
How can the same pitches, played melodically, sound mundane in one instance and dissonant in the other? Perhaps what is found objectionable in Schoenberg's music has to do with the widely displaced notes, rather than the actual pitches.
Here are a couple of arrows for your Schoenberg quiver :> )
When Arnold attended a rehearsal of his wind quintet, he pronounced himself happy with the performance.
It was then pointed out that the clarinet part had been written for clarinet in A, but had just been played on a clarinet in Bb. (Perhaps deliberate sabotage by the performer? It's not unusual.) He had listened to his entire wind quintet with the clarinet a semitone off throughout. His response?
"It doesn't make any difference; that is not the way the music works."
Schoenberg enjoyed playing tennis in his Hollywood days, and was frequently invited by Gershwin to play on the Gershwin court. Arnold had thought the game through carefully, and determined that one stood the best chance of returning the ball from a position in the exact center of the court. So after each shot, he doggedly returned to the center to await the ball. This made it remarkably easy to beat him at the game, but he was not a good loser.
And thank you kindly, Chris, for your welcome to the forum.
Yours &c.
Gioseffo
The BBC Schoenberg bio I saw actually had some video clips of Schoenberg playing tennis!
Zarlino wrote: "It's true that talk therapy is not much used these days, as the profession has turned more to medication, prescribing those pills that can make you suddenly go off your nut and murder your wife, as did the great Carlo Gesualdo."
There is a grain of truth in here--many psychiatrists are now prescribers and not therapists. However, talk therapy is widely used by other mental health professionals, including psychologists, social workers, licensed counselors, and marriage/family therapists. Over and over, research has shown that talk therapy (which is not the same thing as Freudian psychoanalysis) produces results that are at least as good as or better than psychiatric medication, but with more persistent maintenance of results than medication. Also, psychotherapy has no side effects. Psychotherapy without meds has been found to be an effective treatment for major depression, PTSD, anxiety disorders, panic disorders, OCD, and dissociative disorders, among others. I've been a clinical psychologist for 37 years, and I can support everything I've said in this para with references to clinical literature and widely adopted treatment guidelines, but that discussion is completely OT here.
I think your statement that "those pills that can make you suddenly go off your nut and murder your wife" is a prejudice that furthers the stigma of mental illness and getting mental health treatment. There are few if any documented cases of someone without a history of violence who murders a spouse after starting psychgiatric medication. Who knows? Maybe Gesualdo would have managed things better if he'd gotten treatment.
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