Programming new works

A first performance is, most of the time, merely a try-out, and depending on the work, it can be entirely sufficient ('Ah I hear it... no I would never ever want to hear anything like that again') or opening-up a wish for hearing it again ('Oh this is strange... it affects me although I've no idea why because it's contemporary... I would like to hear more of this'). And anything in between. There is no filtering system that 'garantees' sufficient artistic quality to reassure audiences that its time and patience and goodwill is not wasted. We simply have to hope that both the conductor and the programming staff hit upon something that, at least, will be worth a hearing.

The great difficulty of programming new, unknown works, is that there are no longer any standards of language. So, how could one judge? This is the result of 20C modernism that wanted to liberate serious music from traditional standards. If these standards were suffocating strictures, one could wholeheartedly agree. But there also were standards of artistry, sophistication and expression, which are hard to objecify and depend upon musical understanding, which is a subjective quality. Nowadays, the lack of any standards shows itself to be a great obstacle to ever arrive at the addition of valuable works to the existing repertoire.

On top of this are two painful factors, never talked about publicly but showing itself too clearly in what audiences get to hear: 1) performers who consider music, ANY music, as a mere vehicle for their ego and career, and 2) programming staff at orchestras and venues who are mainly of the manager type, for whom musical value or understanding can only be a minor issue since the work involved in creating a season is such a complex and sophisticated job, that the heart of the 'product' of the 'music business' is easily overlooked. And one could understand that easily: if you compare performance practice how it was in the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century, with modern ways of organising a symphony orchestra or a chamber music series, the difference is hughe. At those times, great works (including very original ones) could still bubble-up to the surface and be integrated into the existing repertoire because of an underlying consensus about musical value. Nowadays, such process is no longer possible.

What to be done to this difficult situation for the development of serious Western concert music? I think best is to return to a traditional musical language, in the sense of picking-up that underlying dynamic of musical values that has produced so much great music in the past. This does not mean copying precisely an old language, but taking-up things that feel compatible with one's own authentic musical nature and forge one's own mixture of elements and use it as one's personal language, in all freedom. When new music uses important elements of languages which make-up the existing repertoire, there is a bridge of musical understanding in terms of language between composer and audience, and the composer can share his/her imaginings without the hurdles of inaccessibility. If done with enough sophistication, a new work can be both personal (= new) and immediately accessible (because relating to a more or less common language). 

This touches upon subjects like originality, progress, the relationships between composer, performer and listener, modernist ideologies of the last century, the issues of living in the modern world, the meaning of history in the context of performance culture, and the like. They are treated in 'The Classical Revolution':

https://www.amazon.com/Classical-Revolution-Thoughts-Century-Expanded/dp/0486814483

 

Discussion about Boulez

Here follows a discussion under a video airing Boulez' "Derives II":

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kUeRfwUU_oE&lc=Ugxm_4p4eytcFQt8GoZ4AaABAg.AGEC7CfPKKmAZa6M8Ssswt

Since this is one of B's later works, and 'softer' than his earlier modernism, it is 'nicer' on the ear. But fundamentally the same as all the other of B's works: it is decorative pattern making, sonic art, nothing wrong with it apart from the claims that this would represent something like music. So, I posted a comment under the video.

The reactions by some innocent Boulezian Believers and the discussion that followed, I here reproduce entirely:

------------------------------------------------- 

JohnBorstlap:

With music this has nothing to do, it is about sound patterns and if you like it, it is nice. But the notes are random and don't have any psychological dimension, as in music. It is a different art: sonic art. It is not supposed to isten to as music. Claims that this is a progressive form of the European musical tradition are false and nonsensical. It is a modernist fallacy, an ideological idea, an attempt to give it a respectability that it does not deserve because it wants something very different from music. It has to be enjoyed as Klangkunst, for the sheer pleasure of sound patterns, nothing more.

 

prof.sirjeffreydarling-mil3463:

Sir, I fail to understand why you lurch on youtube videos of Boulez's music and make these hilarious remarks, reflective of a certain fundamentalist attitude; and a complete waste of your time since those of use who perceive this as music are never going to be persuaded by you. For what it's worth, I don't creep onto online platforms of the sort of neotonality you prescribe and attempt thereon to proscribe it. I would suggest, to avoid frustration, that you give up youtubing. The platform has become barely tolerable. I only came here because I wanted to hear the cor anglais solo in the middle of the piece and was too lazy to switch on Tidal. Having read your unwelcome remark, I wish I had just used my comment-free streaming service.

 

JohnBorstlap:

Yes, I know, it's all very difficult. I would say: keep trying! Isn't the difference between sonic art and music interesting? And the lemminglike acceptance of sonic art as music an interesting mass-psychological phenomenon? The point is not to try to 'convert' the lemmings, because you have to be quite unmusical to miss the distinction so they are hopeless, but for musical people knowing what is happening may be interesting and even helpful. The damage done by modernist ideology is, for the lemmings, invisible as so much is invisible to them, but for musicians and audiences of classical music it is helpful if they can understand what they hear and feel, while the small lemming choir sings something quite different. I would advise some reading, instead of grumpy protests because you don't understand something: Alex Ross: The Rest Is Noise; Ernst Roth: The Business Of Music; W.A. Schultz: Damit die Musik nicht aufhört, and Avantgarde und Trauma (in Lettre International nr 71); Roger Scruton: The Aesthetics of music; and concerning Boulez - who brought leninism into the field of new music:  

 

https://subterraneanreview.blogspot.com/2016/01/notes-on-boulez.html 

 

 

prof.sirjeffreydarling-mil3463:

What a remarkable response! I fear perhaps some degree of feeling may have crept into my first message to you, which in turn resulted in your escalation; that is, your use of the insulting term 'lemming' to refer to the listeners of late Boulez. If my tone offended you, please may I offer my apology. If I appeared to offer a 'grumpy protest', then I shall say in American, 'my bad.' If that's ok and settled, I would again like to ask your purpose in posting denunciations of this music on youtube. You state your goal is not to convert admirers of this music to your perspective, but to provide deeper understanding. Is that correct? In which case, perhaps we can explore the topic of Derive 2 further. Thank you for your suggested reading. Your tone seems to presume I won't have read these texts. I will admit I have not read the german text you cite, nor the blog. However, I have of course read Ross and Scruton. Scruton, it must be added, was a right wing conservative thinker who advocates a particular aesthetic in his book — one which seeks to promote none other than Benjamin Britten as an example of a great composer. He also published a book in defence of fox hunting. I haven't read the blog you cite, though I've read most of the academic texts written about Boulez. I'm sorry, but I haven't actually found anything in any of these books that provides a convincing reason to argue that Derive 2 isn't 'music'.

 

JohnBorstlap:

Indeed I think a deeper understanding of music and of Klangkunst / sonic art is most helpful to disentangle art forms from politics - because THAT is which is at the heart of modernism. Boulez, who was a very intelligent man, entirely thought in terms of historicist thinking: musical developments were something like developments as happening in the field of science. (As becomes clear from his essays in 'Orientations', Harvard University Press, 1986). But in science, nobody believes any longer in the ptolemaic world view, since we know for a fact the structure of our solar system is different from what Ptolemeus thought. But no music professional would take seriously the idea that with the development of the late 18th century, the work of JS Bach got obsolete, or that Scriabine has improved upon Chopin, or Stravinksy upon Brahms. Music history sees an ongoing accumulation of works, of styles, of means, and relevance or meaning is judged on the basis of artistic quality. But with modernism, such vision was replaced with the notion of progress, while there is an important question: what does the term 'progress' mean in the arts? This is a philosophical question. In terms of artistry, there is no progress; the only progress there can be in the arts, is the extension, or accumulation, of means, and this is something different from artistic quality or artistic meaning. Scruton was a friend of mine, in spite of my very different opinions about politics - I am not a conservative. But Scruton was a specific British 'romantic' conservative, different from the usual conservative politicians. In the field of culture he was a great thinker and his Aesthetics of Music has nothing conservative about it. In my opinion, if a 'conservative' gets things right, this does not mean these things are conservative but that the said conservative got somethings right (a criminal who correctly explains the pythagorean theorem does not turn the theorem criminal by explaining it correctly). And I was much against Scruton's ideas about fox hunting. His BBC program 'Beauty' however is a brilliant take upon the artistic problems of the 20th century, in my opinion. Whether Derives are music or not, is a matter of terminology and awareness. The proof is in the pudding: from medieval times onwards music (i.e. art music) was meant as a 'language', it had to convey something that was different from words a in real language. The 'meaning' of music could range from a 'cool', objective experience of space (Renaissance polyphony) to very subjective expression (Mahler IX), and everything in between. This was possible through the creation of relationships through tonality which is a natural given (the harmonic series). This created a network of connections which functioned like an 'inner space' where an imaginary movement could take place and qualities like logic and a personal signature and expression found their equivalent. It was a means of creating a coherence that could be immediately aurally experienced, without any effort of the intellect. This explains why listeners can experience the 'inner space' of classical music without having any knowledge of its structural properties. With atonal modernism, this idea was dropped as being 'outdated', and notes got another type of organisation where coherence was reduced to gestures without the inner space as created by tonal coherence. In Derive 2 this is clearly audible: the splintered material is organised in gestures but there is no inner space, no logic because any gesture can be followed by any other gesture. The result is a decorative experiene of patterns where the notes in themselves have only a local meaning, they could be changed to other notes in the same range of pitch without distorting the effect. However, in Derive 2 Boulez often leans against a tonal connection, but he merely touches it before he runs away again (compare this with his piano sonata or Marteau sans Maitre). The experience of Derive 2 for a sensitive and experienced ear is a very nervous jumping around without the sense of any reason for it, it is a 'cool' decorative art in quickly changing patterns. This means all we hear is foreground: it is the aesthetics of pure sound patterns. Compare this with another very intelligent kind of decorative and colourful sound: the music of Debussy, like his ballet music of 'Jeux': behind the refined foreground of sound patterns the notes themselves have a coherent, tonal structure, if a very free one. If you play the piece on the piano the notes cohere. Boulez has to compensate for the lack of an inner tonal space by putting all his ingenuity into the invention of colours, with Jeux the colourful patterns are added on a firm, coherent tonal, musical narrative, with a logical structure going from A to B etc. Such logic is entirely missing in Boulez, everything sounds OK and nice (at its best) but random, it is a static art without any narrative (a narrative implies a psychological content). Listening to de Derives as music, you expect more than the works give, and it is boring because you miss something: the psychological dimension. When you listen to it as decorative pure sound, it is nice, interesting, and you don't expect more from it. I'm always reminded of abtract paintings in the lounges of expensive hotels, to give the impression of modernity without irritating the guests. Classical tonal music can also be entirely superficially decorative, but then the language does create expectations which are not met, and the work is experienced as boring or wanting. Much music by Joachim Raff for instance is well-made, tonal, logical, but lacks the inventiveness and expressive inner space. Hence his fame faded quickly and no works of his ever formed part of the repertoire which is repeated because the works remain interesting and expressive, in spite of the distance in time when it was written, they have hit upon a timeless artistic quality. All of this was total mystery to Boulez of course, he wanted to conquer the music world with his works and his ideas of modernity, and since he could not do that by convincing players and audiences of its artistic qualities, he tried it politically. But he merely locked himself up in a fantasy bubble, and I think his works will always remain at the margins of music life, for a very minor audience who don't care much about all the philosophical aspects of music and are happy with nice decorative sound patterns.

prof.sirjeffreydarling-mil3463:

Sir, It will not surprise you if I beg to differ on some of your points. Unfortunately I do not have time today for the lengthy reply your comment deserves, though I hope to return to it soon. There are, however, areas of agreement. Your remarks about Boulez’s early work — Structures I, for example, which Boulez himself later described as merely a “text” rather than a piece of music — are, I think, broadly correct. Likewise, the statements he made as a young man about modernism do indeed align with aspects of your argument. However, it is demonstrably incorrect to suggest that Boulez continued to hold such hard-line positions as a mature artist. His later writings and, more importantly, his later music contradict them entirely. I remain unconvinced by your analysis when it comes to the mature works — particularly Sur Incises and Dérive 2. In fact, the whole discussion might usefully focus on Dérive 2, which is, in my view, Boulez’s ultimate expression (in the older sense of “final” or “summative”). One could even argue that Dérive 2 encapsulates the entire question of Boulez’s value as a composer. A longer response would necessarily become somewhat technical, since it would involve exploring the thesis that Dérive 2 is, in fact, tonal music. Beyond that, I would wish to broaden the discussion of what constitutes “music” at all, by looking beyond the Western classical canon. I would be interested, for instance, in your thoughts on a sixty-minute taqsim by Oum Kalsoum, or this extraordinary performance by Mohammad Reza Lotfi: 

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WCpiD15zaYo&list=RDWCpiD15zaYo&start_radio=1 

 

You are, without question, an extraordinarily clever, erudite and well-read man. Yet in your enthusiasm to dismiss Boulez — and his listeners, whom you have described as “lemmings” — you sometimes lapse into statements that are simply untrue. You have said, for example, that Boulez was unable to convince audiences of his music’s worth. I must disagree. I have attended performances of Sur Incises, Répons and Dérive 2 in three different countries, each time before large and remarkably enthusiastic audiences (Dérive 2 at the Barbican in 2008, for instance). As I may have mentioned in another thread, I do not listen to Boulez as “sound art” (which I too find empty), but as a musician who has studied Machaut and can play most of the Beethoven sonatas from memory. When I hear Dérive 2, I enter a world of ecstatic dance. In live performance I found the music trance-inducing — and under Barenboim, whose tempo I initially thought painfully slow, there were passages of such tenderness that one of them brought tears to my eyes. Yes: Boulez, tear-inducing. Nor am I alone. The comments on this very video, many expressing joy, serenity, or deep fascination, suggest that not every listener is a lemming.

 

JohnBorstlap:

Just a short reaction: while PB mellowed his atonal stance a bit in his works, his cultural-political crusade remained as intense as ever even at the end of his life. In 2012 well-known french pianist Ducros was invited to hold a lecture at the Collège de France, an important academic institution, a lecture open to the public, where he criticized established atonal modernism in France, demonstrating the obvious flaws of the concept with elegant irony and effective demonstrations on the piano. This lecture provoked a scandal and a flurry of reactions in the french media, amply demonstrating the paranoid ambitions of a crumbling modernist establishment in France, not allowing for alternative points of view. Ducros was even accused of nazi sympathies by the defenders of modernism. This insane reaction was whipped-up by Boulez, who had got very angry on hearing about that lecture: he mobilized his followers to attack Ducros but remained himself tactfully in the shadows, as a courageous modernist behoves. The entire lecture can be seen on YouTube:  

 

www.college-de-france.fr/site/en-karol-beffa/seminar-2012-12-20-15h00.htm 

 

An overall review of the affair can be read on Ducros' Wikipedia website: 

 

https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/J%C3%A9r%C3%B4me_Ducros

 

lucasa4301:

Most serial music requires you to give up the expectation of hearing tonal harmony - that's why you have this reaction of "notes are random and don't have any psychological dimension". One you relieve yourself of wanting to hear something that simply isn't going to happen, you can focus on structure, phrasing, color etc. and the piece takes shape and taps into something that tonal music can't, because it's weighed by deep-rooted harmonic implications that the composer has less control over. Serial music was meant to be "freeing" and allow composers to convey emotion outside of western-tonal implications, though obviously at a certain point the sound of serial music then inhabits its own world of implications and becomes just as passé. I'm not saying one is better than other, but they are both definitely music, and there is definitely 'psychological dimension' in Boulez's music. And sometimes the emotional range in serial music is anemic (just as it can be in tonal music), but that is more a matter of quality, not of style.

JohnBorstlap: 

There is an argument possible to explain the difference of the 'psychological dimensions' of music on one hand, and Boulez' works. Some object that does not intend to convey a psychological content, may produce an emotional reaction nontheless, but the nature of that content is fundamentally different from the psychological dimension of music. Looking at a 'conceptual art work' like a banana on a plank, complete with viewers manual on a plaque, may stirr a strong emotion (irritation, disgust, puzzlement) but that is not an aesthetic emotion. The less someone understands of music, the better he is prepared to appreciate 12-tone Schoenberg, late Webern, Boulez, Xenakis, Haas, Olga Neuwirth, etc. etc. It is always amusing to see defenders of modernism ('atonal music') explain tonality as something hindering creative freedom. In this comment [lucasa4301], the author appears to see 'tonal music' as something constraining the composer, as if 'tonal composers' don't have the great variety of colour that atonal 'composers' have. Such opinion can only be explained as the result of a limited knowledge of 'tonal music', which is a wider field than the major-minor system of old, as the works of Mahler (symphonies nr IX, X), Debussy, Ravel, Scriabin, Stravinsky, Szymanowski amply attest. They are all 'tonal composers' i.e. real composers - with an uninhibited feeling for colour, which is never restricted by tonality - in contrary: it is made possible by then infinite variety that tonal relationships offer. But only for the talented ones of course.

 

lucasa4301:

Sorry, you misunderstand. I mean "freeing" in the sense that composers were no longer required to navigate whether their harmonic language was redundant or cliche, because they were operating on entirely new ground. That isn't to say that tonality didn't lack viable options going forward, nor is it to say that serialism provided an end-all solution to this dilemma (it didn't). I'm entirely with you on conceptual art - but serialism is not conceptual in it of itself, and a composer still has a lot of expressive freedom, even within a confined harmonic setting, which is kind of the whole point of Derive II, which has a really wide expressive palette despite revolving around a single chord. This is quite different than say, Andrew Norman's "Sustain", which is a conceptual work that begins with a 15ish minute statement, and then takes the same music and repeats it at 2x speed, and then does this again, and again until it's a chaotic blur. It's meant to symbolize how we're destroying our planet at an exponential rate, but the problem is that once you know what the piece is doing, it completely loses its teeth emotionally - and it also happens to be tonal. 

 

P.S. it may behoof you to re-read your second paragraph, and then ponder the great many musicians who worked both within tonal and non-tonal frameworks (composers, conductors, performers etc - including one of the "real" composers you mentioned!) who would fall under the umbrella of your statement. That is categorically a ridiculous thing to say.

 

JohnBorstlap:

Such discussion is meaningless because frameworks differ. One thing: the whole idea of serialism is based upon the idea of disconnecting the tones of a musical work from a natural given: the harmonic series, upon which tonality is built. This disconnection destroys many possibilities of music as a 'language' with a psychological content. This is a very obvious fact and easily tested. For instance, the indifference of so many music lovers to 'atonal music', among which 'serial music', is due to this disconnection. The point is: the listening experience is biologically rooted in the harmonic series. Therefore, serialism was a dead end and Boulez' works never extended beyond the decorative, the creativity of sonic patterns. The 'emotional effects' of his works are very different from those of music based upon tonality.

 

lucasa4301:

Yes, discussions do become meaningless when one party isn't willing to engage with the fallacies of their arguments. I completely agree with you that music is a language. Language is also constantly building, shifting, and getting added to, and serialism is just another form of grammar and some added vocabulary. If you don't understand the language, I can understand how that would be frustrating. Incidentally I attended a performance of Derive II when I was 19, and had a miserable time sitting in the audience for 50 minutes straight with what felt like noise, so I empathize. But I went on to play large pieces by Schoenberg and Lachenmann, which helped me to understand how the music actually works and what to listen for. I wouldn't enjoy watching a French film without subtitles. But I also wouldn't describe the film as sonic noise, just because I don't speak French. The fallacy of your argument is that music is not a universal language, like the old adage goes, and the harmonic series may provide the building blocks, but it is not the language itself. To this day, I don't get much out of Gamelan music or Noh, because it's so far removed from my musical upbringing - but like any language, I recognize that if I spent enough time with it, I would learn to understand it, and would probably get enjoyment out of it once I did.

marvinwolfthal6402:

The Society of Boulez Lovers is planning to buy you your very own windmill so you can joust to your heart’s content and leave the rest of us alone to enjoy the pretty music.

 

JohnBorstlap:

I got very different information.... That the SBL has reformed their regulations for membership applications: now the aspirant Boulezians have to swear an oath to defend the Boulez Doctrine, with their left hand on the black tome of Boulez' "Orientations" (Harvard University Press 1986) and the right arm stretched to the fore at 90 degrees. This had been deemed necessary after 7 members of the Society had accidentally read my book on the fallacies of modernism, had a nervous breakdown and had to be hospitalized.

 

-------------------- 

Addendum (not under the mentioned video): obviously the point is the claims that a work like B's Derive 2 is a work of music, undermines any qualities the work may have because from music we expect something else, something different from what Boulez can offer. The piece has to be listened to as decorative pattern-making of gestures and colours. Listened to as music, it fails because of the lack of any coherent psychological dimension (which may create a structure or narrative) and the irritating nervousness of the virtuosic patterns that are a mere succession of fragments, static, rambling. The gestures do not have a psychological content, but they can produce a psychological reaction as any object or sound can, but that is something different from a psychological / expressive dimension of a piece of music that opens a psychological space where emotional things happen, like a walk through a landscape. Also from the enthusiastic - or at least, welcoming and grateful - comments under the video, and the warm applause after the performance, one can conclude that these listeners have a very ridumentary understanding of music, or no musical perception at all - probably they will also hear any classical music as pure sound patterns and gestures. 

 

This shows how modernist ideologies which deny the nature of music have opened the doors to people (composers, performers, listeners) without musical understanding or even talent, occupying spaces where they don't belong, and thus undermining the art form in general by distorting it beyond recognition, reducing it to pure sound, without a psychological / expressive dimension. This is like a reductive description of the human being as purely physical, ignoring personality, character, temperament, in short: denying the human psyche and the entire subjective dimension of the species. It is not difficult to see here a link with the way modern Western society has treated nature, as something like pure physical material to be expoited for practical ends, thereby damaging nature's precious balances and its psychological meaning for us, humans, who form a part of nature and who are a product of evolution on this planet.

 

 

 

Wild woking

 

Post on Slipped Disc:

https://slippedisc.com/2026/07/a-label-for-women-composers/

"For centuries, women have composed ambitious, innovative and influential works, yet their music remains dramatically under-represented in today’s concert programming."

What an odd sentence. The organisers of this recording project know about these 'ambitious, innovative and influential works', although they are unknown. How can these works be influential if they were and still are unknown? I don't know any trace of important influences by female classical music. I don't believe at all that there have been many composing women in the past as compared to composing men, simply because (this is something we really do know) it was 'not done', it was not expected from women and most women followed conventions of their time. But it was different from painting and performing music which was OK for women.

The unbearable kitsch impression from the fragments in the video does suggest the worst - mediocre pieces being celebrated for their makers' gender, providing happy feelings for the participants of being virtuous.

It is clear that any music which may be deserving our attention should be performed with indifference to the gender of its makers. But wanting to redress the balance for an entirely speculative suppression of so many brilliant female composers in the white male feudal past by digging-out mediocrities is simply inverted discrimination. Also it may damage the chances of contemporary female composers because when all these historically-suppressed geniusses get pushed through audiences' throats, 'female composer' gets a bad name. It is politicising composer's gender, the music gets instrumentalised for political woke aims, and people no longer listen to the music but to the stories around it.

The more the classical music world gets woked, the less the music will play a role and discussions will only be political, not musical.

There are more and more now forgotten composers dug-out from the historic archives, mostly male, and that is a good thing - even if it is only to complete the historical record. Youtube is great in sharing these obscure works. But I never heard any piece that did not somehow 'justify' it being forgotten. In contrary, you get a better idea about the cause of the 'staying power' of the music that still forms the core of the classical repertoire.

Increasing awareness of unfair discrimination - that is, not discrimination because of quality flaws but on factors that have nothing to do with music - is a good thing but this should lead to awareness of such discrimination in our own time, and not exclusively on the basis of gender and ethnicity but in general, for instance the discrimination of music during the last century due to modernist totalitarian claims (hardly ever explored). Again, the best instrument to realise this ideal is the music itself.

'Wokism' appears to be a form of cultural marxism, by the ultra left who have seen the evaporation of communism and thus, have been looking for other injustices to fight. And as so often with insufficiently considered idealism, it results in its own forms of suppression and policing - like the jacobins in the french revolution killing everybody suspected of not quite believing in the beautiful ideals of freedom, equality and brotherhood.

 

Proof: readers that got this far with reading this comment and concluding it being a dropping of conservative, feudally-suppressing white-male protests against the beautiful, liberating forces of justice and equality, look into the woke mirror, which congratulates them with their invented virtues - confirming their woke credentials.