DiscussWorldIssues - Socio-Economic Religion and Political Uncensored Debate - View Single Post - feeling about contemporary classical music?

**chelviweeme** · 07-17-2012, 07:45 PM

It's a valid question, to ask about what people think of Contemporary Art music (I prefer to use that term rather than 'classical' music). People are leaving the concert hall in droves because of the avant garde, which is a more esoteric area of the contemporary scene. I don't blame them because, for me, music must have some kind of melody - even 'implied' melody. Without this ingredient music has all the emotional appeal of a dictionary and I can do better by reading a dictionary!! The remoteness of composition to audience expectation was alluded to recently by Roger Norrington in the film 'In Search of Haydn'. Norrington observed, "Haydn was always wanting to please his audiences. Wouldn't that be something novel today; composers actually wanting to please audiences". I think Norrington has summed the issues up with that single sentence.

The only word I would challenge in that reply is the use of the word music in conjunction with contemporary; for me there has been little if any contemporary output that would fit my definition of music over the last 30 or so years in any genre, classical, jazz or pop. As for film scores, without the visual content of the film they are for the most part meaningless.

07-17-2012, 07:45 PM	#12
chelviweeme Join Date Nov 2005 Posts 480 Senior Member	It's a valid question, to ask about what people think of Contemporary Art music (I prefer to use that term rather than 'classical' music). People are leaving the concert hall in droves because of the avant garde, which is a more esoteric area of the contemporary scene. I don't blame them because, for me, music must have some kind of melody - even 'implied' melody. Without this ingredient music has all the emotional appeal of a dictionary and I can do better by reading a dictionary!! The remoteness of composition to audience expectation was alluded to recently by Roger Norrington in the film 'In Search of Haydn'. Norrington observed, "Haydn was always wanting to please his audiences. Wouldn't that be something novel today; composers actually wanting to please audiences". I think Norrington has summed the issues up with that single sentence. The only word I would challenge in that reply is the use of the word music in conjunction with contemporary; for me there has been little if any contemporary output that would fit my definition of music over the last 30 or so years in any genre, classical, jazz or pop. As for film scores, without the visual content of the film they are for the most part meaningless.
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