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In Reply to: RE: Implications of Stanford's Chromaticism posted by Newey on October 27, 2015 at 22:30:11
Hoodwinked by a second-rate English composer on Saturday.
Validating Chris' points by Wednesday.
You've come quite a long way. ; )
Follow Ups:
. . . is that, often, one can't be 100% certain that a given analysis is even correct, especially the further one goes into the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The famous example of this is Wagner's "Tristan Chord" (highlighted below - from the Wikipedia article), which in itself does not form an actual chord (at least in terms of traditional structural harmony): what we hear as the "Tristan Chord" is actually a standard pre-dominant augmented sixth chord (the augmented sixth being the interval from the F-natural to the D-sharp), but with an appoggiatura (the G-sharp) which resolves to the actual chord tone at the very end of the bar - the A-natural - which passes by quickly (almost as if it were a passing tone rather than the actual chord tone!). (BTW, I don't agree with the part of the Wikipedia article that calls the G-sharp a suspension. If the G-sharp is a suspension, what's it suspended from?) It's the same with the following "chord" at the start of the third measure: the A-sharp. which seems to be part of the "chord", is just another appoggiatura, and the following B-natural is the resolution to the actual chord tone. That second chord thus becomes a familiar E7 chord, implying that the key is A-minor, although Wagner does not allow us to hear a resolution at this point. The "Tristan Chord" deceived many listeners, because it's held for so long that they thought it was an actual chord, rather than part of a chord, with that little eighth-note that follows being the actual component of it.
BTW, I apologize - I realize I'm not telling you anything you probably don't already know, but I wanted to make the point that harmonic analysis is not a cut and dried methodology by any means, and is often subject to different points of view (and arguments!).
Sure, many have encountered at least some analysis of the famous Tristan chord. It's sinewy influence - almost serpentine - on subsequent generations of composers and even other art forms [No Tristan - No Schoenberg - no exeggeration] can't be overstated. Lot's has been written about it, including lots of liner notes, which for many, have served as their sole exposure to analysis.
And yet, the post above has been presented in such an illuminating way.
In fact, your post right here is the kind of thing that this place needs. Personally, that one paragraph of yours is the best thing I've read all month.
This is exactly the kind of thing that opens up insights into the music - like shafts of light entering a cave - and in addition, illuminates the historic practice of the time. It even affects how we may proceed to view the latest, up-to-the-minute-mod-dude conclusions of the HIPs.
Most folks [at least those around here] haven't spent years of their short lives pouring over books of music analysis and history. But, if you have, then over and over and over and over you find, in books and articles, the condemnation of the practices of the Romantics for precisely the kinds of harmonic procedures that you've outlined. In the endless tomes produced during the 20th century, the attitude veers from hostility to flat out war-like aggression and anger aimed at Romantic composers - ALL OF WHOM - ironically, created the most popular music in the literature of classical music.
Armed with one's own insightful analysis, such as yours above, it's easy to see how the hostile musicologists came to their source of irritation. None of the music of the Romantic period fits the classical era forms to which the Romantics clung. The sonata had to be stretched, and as we say today - morphed - to accomodate the Romantic style of expression.
Indeed, musicologists have even developed a new model with which to grapple with the harmonic procedures of the late Romantics: SONATA DEFORMATION, or the distorted sonata form.
The old school scholars and critcs - all of them, to a man - with out a SINGLE EXCEPTION - concluded that the Romantics had corrupted music with their unruly practices, and thus that their music was pretty much worthless.
Thankfully, audiences don't read much music analysis, and blissfully continue to love Tchaikovsky, Brahms [yep - even he suffered some "corruption"], Berlioz, Mahler, Strauss, Wagner, Dvorak, Sibelius, etc., etc.
It's staggering to consider that nobody's ever challenged that academic view. EXCEPT ME.
It's so simple. Of course, the old sonata form had been changed by the Romantics. And - this is the bombshell right here----> >
IT IS ABSOLUTELY 100% VALID IN IT'S THEN NEW, ROMANTIC TRANSFORMATION.
The application of powdered-wig, aristocracy-ruled-society-with-zero-human-rights, Haydn/Mozart-era-music rules was now OBSOLETE. NULL AND VOID.
The orderly movement from tonic to dominant, with clever and witty accouterments along the way, was no longer RELEVANT. No longer applicable. The walls had long ago been shattered. The Romantic symphony was a new invention; partly based on the old, but filled with its own bolder, newer harmonic adventure and mode of expression.
Thus, the constant and constantly growing harmonic restlessness and wandering that increased as the 19th century progressed was, in fact, progress towards the goal of ever greater self-expression; NOT evidence of corruption and ineptitude.
Ralph Vaughan-Williams speaks more deeply to me than Mendelssohn, and Mendelssohn more deeply than any single note of Mozart. They speak more immediately and deeply because their expression reaches a deeper and more personal level than the formal, solid and stolid rule-abiding style of the classicists. And, millions of listeners feel the same way.
Your analysis [which, BTW, is, as you've said, nothing we haven't seen before - but very clearly laid out] demonstrates with crystal clarity why the old rules of analysis no longer apply, and were no longer relevant to a bold new style of expression. Rather than accepting and understanding that, the academics and professional analysts stubbornly insisted on applying Mozart-era standards to a new age.
Oh, and they haven't completely stopped. Although much of the modernist/serialist-fueled hatred toward late Romanticism has faded somewhat, it still persists. I often wish I could throttle some of those bozos in person.
N. Thelman, SSI
concluded that the Romantics had corrupted music...."You go on:
"It's staggering to consider that nobody's ever challenged that academic view. EXCEPT ME."
Wow. Saviour of the art world!
It's a rookie move to assume that Romantic composers' premieres received only hostile reviews/critiques. It's like claiming that Furtwangler never sped up the music he conducted.
Moreover--and deliciously-ironic--is that the conservative, and/or negative critics of the times were more concerned with the immorality associated with Romantic Art; not necessarily the music itself. You also neglect to consider critics who changed their personal views over the years or even months.
Took about 5 minutes to find three examples which are contrary to your claims:
On Wagner's Tristan in London: "Of all the articles to come out of the period leading up to the premiere, the one that stands out as the most overwhelmingly positive is 'Tristan and Isolde An Analysis of Richard Wagner's Music-Drama" by Frederick Corder." It was published in the Musical Times and Singing Class Circular on 1 March 1882."
On Strauss Salome premier in NYC: "STRAUSS'S "SALOME" THE FIRST TIME HERE; A Remarkable Performance at the Metropolitan. MME. FREMSTAD AS SALOME Superb Impersonations by Messrs. Burrian and Van Rooy -- Alfred Hertz Wins New Laurels. -- New York Times 23 Jan 1907"
On Mahler's 1st: "Mahler conducted this fourth performance [of his 1st Symphony] on 16th March 1896 in Berlin. The composer and music critic Ernst Otto Nodnagel, approved of these major revisions which addressed previous criticisms he had raised in his review of the 2nd performance (published in the Berliner Tageblatt and Magazin für Litteratur), regarding the confusing programme notes and the "Trivial" 'Blumine' movement. He wrote that the latest version of the work received "lively approval, even from part of the hostile press."
Edits: 10/29/15
WRONG WRONG WRONG WRONG WRONG WRONG WRONG WRONG WRONG WRONG WRONG WRONG
There you go again, getting the whole thing WRONG.
You've COMPLETELY missed my point.
That's NOT NOT NOT NOT NOT NOT what I was talking about.
How can you keep being WRONG every time?
'Scuse me, but I didn't say ONE WORD about "Romantic composers' premieres"? Where'd you git that from?
> > It's a rookie move to assume that Romantic composers' premieres received only hostile reviews. < <
You're so intent on catching me making some kind of error, that you're tripping over yourself shooting at me. I didn't say ONE WORD about 19th century premiers. I wasn't referring to critical - or audience - reception at premiers, or during the composer's lifetime, or during the 19th century at all. In my post, all of the words and paragraphs above the sentence you've quoted and after CLEARLY discuss 20th century scholarly and critical analysis of 19th century music. You have to be DENSE not to understand that.
In fact, delving into actual 19th century history is just that - serious assed historical research. A little bit of internet clipping doesn't even begin to scratch the surface. That's why there're such things as whole university-level historical research departments employing professional musicologists and professional historials who engage in such research. I actually have a bit of training in that sort of thing, so I know the what a monumental task it is.
Be that as it may, what I was talking about was the 20th century attitude on the part of musicologists and critics toward the 19th century, particularly after WWII. If you'd actually read my posts, rather than just skimming and picking out a sentence or phrase as you seem to usually do [and actually, I doubt that you're even reading this far right here], then you'd have seen that I took pains to specify 20th century writings. Here's an example:
"In the endless tomes produced during the 20th century, the attitude veers from hostility to flat out war-like aggression and anger aimed at Romantic composers - "
See that?? See that???? "..during the 20th century...".
'Ja git that part? TWENTIETH CENTURY. Git it?
That'd be the century starting with a 19xx, NOT 18xx. We're in the 21st century now, by the way, and the numbers start with 20xx, as in "2015". You may have to think about that for a while.
I also said "Most folks [at least those around here] haven't spent years of their short lives pouring over books of music analysis and history...".
That was my way of saying that I've done exactly that. Having done all of that, I can tell you that, over and over, book after book, article after article, one finds nothing but, well, hostility towards anything after Beethoven and prior to hardcore serialism - FROM 20th CENTURY ANALSYTS [jeez]. The more snippy musicologists don't even regard Schoenberg's atonal phase as anything much more than extreme, hyper-late-Romantic chromatism. That's how viscious those bozos were. And, there're plenty of them still around in academia today, just as there're plenty of neo-commies [and dried-up, bitter ancient commies] hanging around.
But, you managed to miss my point entirely. By a solar mile. Are you still reading this far? Concentrate now - focus, dude, focus.
What I was talking about was how 20th century musicologists analyzed the use of sonata forms during the 19th century, especially the late Romatic period. Even today, they savage it. The reason is that 19th century composers had to twist, turn, expand, and METAMORPHOSE the form to make it work for them. I said all of that SPECIFICALLY.
How'd you miss it?
Go back and re-read my post. OTOH, don't. Don't bother. It won't sink in. You seem to suffer from poor reading comprehension and/or limited attention span. Seriously. I'm not just taking a shot at you here. It's been a pattern. You seem to just land on one sentence or another in a post, and you go crazy with that. It may sound uncivil - some have warned me about it, but the evidence is becoming really clear. I think you've got some sort of - trying to be polite here - cognitive deficit. Not my problemo, but it affects me when you use your personal issues to try to disparage me and what I post.
N. Thelman, SSI
What do you mean by that?You're elevating one group of critics (the enemy) by ignoring their more prescient and insightful peers in order to fancy yourself the savior of Romantic/post-Romantic Art?
That's sick.
There are--and were--plenty of "academics" who are and were quite fond and supportive of artists of those eras.*
And there were plenty of critics who weren't.
And there were some critics who evolved over their lifetimes.
*Based upon your previous behavior, you were worth three examples this morning.
Edits: 10/29/15
Limited. It really is. Don't feel diminished. You can't, and don't have to know everything.
I know this stuff cause I canvassed and read it since 1972. I can see just from your posts that you don't have knowledge in this particular corner. Your errors range from being a bit off base to way off base. I'm too tired to type up a full response, but just quickly:
> > ignoring their more prescient and insightful peers in order to fancy yourself the savior of Romantic/post-Romantic Art? < <
Not doing that. Those "prescient" peers - during what? The latter 20th cent? Are you kidding? Do you have any idea how hard the serialist/modernists ruled and how comprehensive their influence was?
There's no point in belaboring this point with me. The published record is all there, in tons of books and articles which they produced.
> > There are--and were--plenty of "academics" who are and were quite fond and supportive of artists of those eras.* < <
Off of the point again. Yes, there always were devoted supporters of composers. That's NOT what I was talking about. READ MY STINKING POSTS ALL THE WAY THROUGH. I've had to make my same point about the 5th time to you already. I was talking about the way the musicologists/academics/critics took apart the Romantic sonata. And, from that disembowelment, the proceeded to disparage the composers and eventually the whole period. Go back a read my post. If you still have questions, ask.
Done with typing for tonight.
N. Thelman, SSI
Yes, Serialism (though you realize there's more to modernism than Serialism?) was all the rage for awhile, but: are you saying that *no one* has ever challenged their alleged negative attitudes toward the Romantic era? Ever? Except you?What do you really know about these people? Psst: sometimes they've even challenged themselves! And, darn it, even before you got the chance to set them straight.
For example:
Did you know Milton Babbit loved cheesy musical theater? And even wrote a broadway show?
Did you know that Boulez listens to Tchaikovsky for...pleasure??? OMG!!!!
Stravinsky, who hailed Eliot Carter's "thorny" Piano Concerto a masterpiece and later wrote in the "modernist" style himself, said that there's still plenty of good music to be written in C Major, which brings me to my point:
"Modernists" don't hate the Romantic style, they simply hate poor, warmed-over, derivative re-hashings of said style.
Tell us: which Academic held a gun to Barber's or Rachmaninoff's head and forbade them to write?
Did you know that those evil "modernist academics" voted to give Samuel Barber the Pulitzer prize at the height of you so-called war? Twice! (For his "old school" piano concerto and opera, Vanessa.) These are things that a poseur simply can't know.
You've put together nothing but a patchwork knowledge to serve your own ego and conspiracy theories. Your posts are nothing but gross generalizations, betraying your extreme discomfort with the genre. Every time you venture beyond simple rote memorization/recall to synthesis, your posts devolve into pure sophistry.This typical combination of cluelessness, condescension and ego is precisely why you're such a laughing stock. History--and the people in it--are far more complex than you seem to care to know.
Edits: 10/30/15
Here we go again. This is getting tiresome. I feel as tho I'm lecturing a mentally deficient child, going over the SAME STINKING POINTS, over and over and over and over again.
> > You said, "EXCEPT ME." (Your caps.) Really? Except you? < <
Yes, really. I fully aware of how ridiculous it sounds, and I've typed it out a bit tongue-in-cheek, but to anyone fluent in musicological studies [which you are NOT - demonstrably], no one's put forward my idea in the 45 years that I've been reading and studying this stuff. Frankly, I'm discouraged and disgusted that a world full of bright people hasn't produced someone who could have done so, but the reason lays in the nature of academic research and the politics involved. That, however, is another topic for another time.
> > ...are you saying that *no one* has ever challenged their alleged negative attitudes toward the Romantic era? Ever? Except you? < <
NOPE. I DIDN'T SAY THAT. Never said that. Re-read my posts. Either your trying to construct a straw man in order to knock down, or it's your mental deficiency and lack of reading comprehension showing again. Maybe you should seek medical help.
> > Did you know that Boulez listens to Tchaikovsky for...pleasure? < <
> > Did you know that those evil "modernist academics" voted to give Samuel Barber the Pulitzer prize at the height of you so-called war? Twice! < <
For the Nth time [jeez, you're dense] - I'M TALKING ABOUT MUSICOLOGISTS! ANALYSTS! NOT COMPOSERS.
Did that sentence sink in at all. Jiminy? Probably not. Probably just flew right over that dim skull of yours. Can you even discern the difference?
> > your posts devolve into pure sophistry. \ < <
Sophistry? Huh? Let's see. If it's something you don't understand, and on evidence of all of your posts that seems to include pretty much everthing, if it's something you can't grasp - it's sophistry. Hmmm. How do you feel about nuclear physics? "Sophistry"? Nevermind.
Do yourself a favor and get smarter, rather than raving and hollering in ignorance. Go read Prof. Julian Horton's article linked to my Sonata Deformation post. That may at least get you started in the right direction.
N. Thelman, SSI
> Did you know that Boulez listens to Tchaikovsky for...pleasure? <
> > For the Nth time [jeez, you're dense] - I'M TALKING ABOUT MUSICOLOGISTS! ANALYSTS! NOT COMPOSERS. < <
> > > Sigh. Boulez is a musicologist and an analyst, as well as a composer. < < <
> your posts devolve into pure sophistry. <
> > Sophistry? Huh?> >
> > > See Boulez comments above. < < <
Simply denying historical events doesn't mean that they didn't occur.
You're denying actual history. That you're unaware of it's not surprising. Most people don't know musicological history, and frankly, we're better off for it.
What's unfortunate is that rather than learning, you're NOT learning. You're doing he opposite. Not only are you yelling your brains out that the musicological history of which you're ignorant never occurred, but your using that to blast AD HOMINEM attacks on me.
It's sad how you turn EVERY SINGLE learning opportunity into an opportunity to fight instead. Not only that, but every time you've posted something -- IT'S WRONG!! What do we can people such as that? Hmm, let's see? Ignoramus comes to mind, but I'm sure that there're better terms.
DO THIS--> > GO TO MY DEFORMED SONATA THREAD
CLICK ON THE ATTACHED ARTICLE
READ IT
Assuming that you possess normal or better IQ, that should get you on the road to being musically informed. Maybe then you can stop yelling your head off like an ignoramus.
N. Thelman, SSI
Jiminy Daniels has descended into doing nothing but hurling insults at me.
There's no more constructive or instructive dialog taking place here.
I have no wish to entertain or encourage a truculent troll. Therefore, I shall no longer post or reply in this thread, and I urge the moderator to use the option to freeze this thread to future posts.
Thank you.
N. Thelman, SSI
Please, anyone in the Newian camp--his fellow connoisseurs, etc.-- don't help, thanks. He's be so insulted; I'm sure he couldn't live with himself.
Edits: 10/31/15
Seriously, no problem. Did my time with the Tristan chord but it's always fun to take another look.
Crude, tasteless, profanity. So original. Nobody IN THE WORLD does that sort of thing these days, right? Have you considered coaching or even providing gangster rappers with lyrics? I'm sure they've never, EVER even thought about using sexual obscenities.
You're the only one, and you just so plumb pleased with yourself. Just so darn---witty. Clever. Why, crude sex references and even outright graphic sex act descriptions just never, ever, ever occur anywhere in the world today - not even nearly every issue of Stereophile, much less mainstream magazines by the score, tweets, etc.
You are an original. Singular. Unique. You might even get a Nobel Prize nomination. Sky's the limit for a mind such as yours.
**
What a twit. A profane, wrong-way-Jackson twit. Gets everything wrong, even off-the-cuff throw away posts. Soon, I may post a catalog of errors. There'd be a lot of typing, however, so I'm not inclined to hurry.
N. Thelman, SSI
King Marke discovers Tristan having sex with his wife in Act 2. Wagner defers the Tonic right at the "point of no return." The cadence is completed, finally, at the very end of the opera, after Tristan is dead.
It's a famous moment with which any freshman music student would be familiar, and very relevant to our discussion.
I Stand Corrected
You're right. Very good analogy there. Excellent.
I just completely missed it.
However, you'd have made incalculably more impact if you had chosen a less sophomoric, hormonal-15-year-old-snot-nose type head mast. Try something normal; a witty but non-screaming head mast is much better. Shows active brain function and intelligence, rather than drug use and atrophy.
See how easy that is, Jiminy? When you're wrong, just admit that you're wrong. Learn from your mistake. Learning is better than unhinging your jaw and running your mouth. Someday, even you may come to understand that.
N. Thelman, SSI
...rolls her eyes and screams, "oh brother," it's not because she just read one of your narcissistic posts!*
Anyway, your heros, which I happen to like too:
Read the actual text behind Sibelius' Kullervo, or Mendelssohn's Mid-Summer Night's Dream. Eyebrow-raising stuff about Summer that Shakespeare wrote.
Mahler's 8th Symphony, a fusion of the Sacred and Secular--big no no.
I think you get the idea about Wagner, LOL.
Then, of course, Stravinsky's Rite--a ritual murder of a teenaged virgin. No immorality there.
Firebird? Busoni's Faust? Berlioz Fantastique? The occult. OOOOooooh.
Ravel's Daphnis, soft-core porn.
Which Newey are you today? It's hard to tell from one post to the next.
*(Is that lively discussion, or a below the belt retort? I don't know.)
The content of your post was excellent. It was the subject line head mast that was juvenile and unnesessary.
I don't feel like typing more about it.
N. Thelman, SSI
beyond cut and paste. It's because you've spent a lifetime putting symbol before sound; obsessing with symbol over sound.
For example: How can you even begin to discuss or appreciate the Tristan chord without being familiar with the music? Without even knowing the story?
g
N. Thelman, SSI
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