Standards for New Music

[some guy]

Dedicated to JohnF, who gave me the idea.

New music gives a lot of classical listeners no end of grief, apparently. And a lot of listeners return the compliment, with interest, complaining about all the things new music does or fails to do. I recently read a long post on FB about how the hideosities of new music were all the result of a universal lack of talent compared with the geniuses of the past, a post blissfully unaware that this criticism of the new is--as most criticisms are, come to think of it--about two hundred years old, or more.*

So are there any standards for new music, or is new music just one giant nose-thumb at the blue haired snowflakes who melt at anything past Brahms? (At anything that sounds post-Brahms, that is.)

Well, as it happens, there are standards for new music, and, what's more, for listeners as well. Let's take the listeners first.

Standard number one: new music is new, that is, it is not the same as old music. Why, even old music from 1870 is different from old music from 1770, though those differences have been smoothed over by time, it's true. That means that the standards of judgement appropriate to past musics will not apply. So don't try to apply them.

Standard number two: So how do you know if the music's any good or not? Well, you don't. Even if you listen to a lot of new musics, you still don't know when a genuinely new piece comes your way if it's any good or not. Best not to fash, I'd counsel. As it turns out, the concern about the quality of a new piece is actually a concern about the auditor's taste. What you want to know is whether or not you are justified in liking this piece, no? (Somehow, disliking a piece seems not to need any justification at all, but that's a whole weird area....)

Standard number three: taste. A music colleague of mine once said that my liking X recording of Y piece showed that I had good taste. That was probably the most insulting thing anyone has ever said to me. After all, the principal enemy of creativity, as we all know, is good taste. Having good taste might be fairly benign if it's about music of the past, i.e., music that is known, is familiar. Preferring Purcell to Telemann is not going to hurt you too much, probably. But good taste is going to let you down, and let you down badly, if you try to apply it to situations where something new is going on. In new music, something new is always going on. It's not going to seem like it's letting you down, of course. In fact, it's going to seem like it's the music that's letting you down. And that is how good taste is pernicious--it's keeping you from having positive experiences, and it's encouraging you to blame the wrong things when you don't.

Standard number four: So if what you already know, what you've learned from all those years of concert attendance and from reading and from buying recordings, is not going to help in judging new music, what is there? Well, I hope that by now, you will have noticed that the point of listening to music is enjoying not judging, but there is a there there, and it's right there in the piece itself--every piece will tell you how to listen to it. Let it. It's true for old music, too, but there there is so much tradition and so many other opinions that it's easy to forget that Mendelssohn's fifth symphony tells you how to listen to it, and what it tells you is different from what his fourth symphony tells you. I hope by this point that I don't need to point out, again, that if you listen to the fifth expecting it to behave like the fourth, you won't ever be able to freely enjoy the fifth.

If you're still reading, here are the standards for the music itself.

Standard number one: It doesn't sound like music of the past. This is a tricky one, so it's important to get it right. "Music of the past" is a broad category, and it's easy for us in 2019 to hear all the many connections that Tchaikovsky, say, has with musics of his own past. Easier for us than for listeners in Tchaikovsky's time, who found it easier to notice how different this barbaric Russian was from the civilized Germans that they were used to. And you all probably can remember a time when Stravinky's Le Sacre was the percussive piece par excellence--until, that is, it became clear that it was full of melodies throughout.

It's also true that "sounds like" is as much a function of the listener as it is of the music itself. (You cannot escape the importance of the listener.) So if you are familiar with a lot of new music, it will be easy to hear other new music in the piece you've never heard before. There's the rule of thumb right there: if it sounds like something from five years ago, or even from fifty or sixty years ago, that's probably better than it sounding like something from a hundred or a hundred and sixty years ago.

A lot of composers woo traditional audiences by pastiche, by purposely imitating the sounds and patterns that that audience is already comfortable with. That, says standard number one, is a bad thing.

Standard number two: This is a variant of standard number four in the listener column. A piece will tell you how to listen to it. If there is a loud burst and then a long silence then another loud burst and then a long silence, chances are that you're to pay as much attention to the silences as to the bursts. Simply waiting, impatiently, for the next burst is not going to do it for you. If there is pretty constant loud noise with no motion back and forth between loud and soft (or tight harmonies and loose ones), then you will (if you follow that direction) start to notice the small changes and the tremendous variety inside that apparently uniform wall of sound. Same goes for pretty constant soft noise as well, just by the way. Same instruction: don't wait for a big, obvious change. Enjoy the small, subtle changes.

Standard number three: None of any of this is about you. Even though every composer, without exception, wants you to listen to their music, very few composers (perhaps none) know you personally, so their decisions about what to write come from somewhere else than your tastes and desires. Any pandering is a bad sign--whether it's pandering to the blue hairs (pace standard number one) or pandering to a perceived desire by the new music audience for tight harmonies or drones or nude plastic dolls. The role of the composer is not to please you. The role of the listener is very definitely to try to enjoy whatever the composer comes up with. There will be failure, of course. I, for instance, continue to fail to enjoy Chopin. But I would never in a thousand years attribute that failure to anything Chopin did or did not do.

That's about it. You're not going to like everything. Just don't bash the things you don't like as if your not liking them is a criticism of them. (Biasses and prejudices should not be taken as standards.) Not everything you hear is going to last. But guess what, you're not going to last either. Are you alive now? Do you like what you're hearing? It is enough.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

*An 18th century critic remarked once that there was really not that much for Mozart to say as Boccherini had already said everything worth saying. The specific metaphor he used was a gardening one: since Boccherini had already used up all the fertile ground, the only thing left for Mozart was some rocky, infertile ground. Some years later, a different critic said of Beethoven that since Mozart had already used up all the fertile ground, the only thing left for Beethoven was some rocky, infertile ground. Some years after that, yet a third critic said that since Beethoven had used up all the fertile ground, the only thing left for Berlioz was some rocky, infertile ground.

[Belle]

One of the pleasures of listening to 'old' music is that I didn't need to read a lecture and instructions on how to like and enjoy it. That happened spontaneously because most of it speaks with an immediacy to the widest possible audience at any one time.

It doesn't suit your narrative that people can listen to music from the middle ages right up to the present and know immediately whether they like it. Or not. Or whether they're even prepared to take it further. Explication not needed, but extra information naturally adds to the experience once your interest has been engaged. I don't recall ever having become infatuated by a piece of music purely on the basis of anything I'd read about it beforehand. Somebody might recommend a piece - they invariably do this here on CMG. Right away I'll know whether I like it or not, no matter what it is. But no amount of reading is going to change my mind if I don't like it, particularly after more than one hearing.

Those quotes you provide by "a critic" about Beethoven et. al are just folderol. Those quotes have never appeared in any scholarly texts I've read on music - and I've read a great many.

You might apply the same argument about food. You could actually persuade people to eat all their greens and for them to like and appreciate them. But I wouldn't gamble on the success of that strategy.

One of the people in our music group detests the music of Louis Armstrong. She can't stand his style of singing or playing. I could suggest she read more on the topic and open her mind but I can tell you she'd only get her back up if I did this. It would be very patronizing of me to assume that she SHOULD like it.

If audiences aren't adopting the music you love but are abandoning it in droves the problem isn't with the people. That's a basic principal of psychoanalysis.

[John F]

Thanks for spelling out what you mean. It makes sense in its own terms. However, I don't think it makes sense in terms of the actual history of music and its reception when new and later when not so new. As Schoenberg said, "There is still much good music to be written in C major." And it's that new music which gets a friendlier reception from lay audiences than, say, Schoenberg's own music.

You might claim that any music - classical music, anyway - written today in C major isn't really new music at all. If so, then we disagree on what new music is, and even on what "new" means. And indeed we do, as we've shown in many exchanges in Classical Music Guide over the years.

Taste is not the same thing as "good taste." Everybody has his/her own personal taste, the total of all the likes and dislikes that are so important in our personalities and conduct. "Good taste" is judgmental, a kind of snobbery, and I agree with you that even using the expression is intrinsically insulting. The ancient Latin maxim that there can be no arguing about tastes is as true today as ever.

if what you already know, what you've learned from all those years of concert attendance and from reading and from buying recordings, is not going to help in judging new music, what is there?

Judging new music, whether by you or me, is an expression of personal taste. As such, our previous experience of all kinds of music is not only helpful in reaching our personal judgments, even on the basic level of like or dislike, it's essential. And because taste is so integral to our personalities, we can't avoid making judgments.

As for the music itself, you exaggerate the differences between pieces of music. Mendelssohn's 4th and 5th symphonies are more alike than different, not only because of Mendelssohn's distinctive style but also in their uses of tonality and form. Knowing the one does help in grasping the other, perceiving not only how they're alike but how they're different. If you don't know the Dresden Amen, you'll miss the point of certain passages in the first and third movements. Certainly ignorance of Mendelssohn's other music and the Dresden Amen is no help.

I agree that a piece of music "tells" us how to listen to it, at least from moment to moment. My own experience is that a first hearing of any piece from any period or style doesn't do the job. I am still hearing things in centuries-old music that I hadn't grasped in decades of listening; This is partly because of increased familiarity, possibly because of differences between performances, and not infrequently from reading about the music in essays or books.The better I get to know the music or know about it, the more it can tell me how to listen to it.

Any or all of this may be useless to you, but I'm not making a general statement, I'm talking about me.

[some guy]

One of the pleasures of listening to 'old' music is that I didn't need to read a lecture and instructions on how to like and enjoy it. That happened spontaneously because most of it speaks with an immediacy to the widest possible audience at any one time.

One of my pleasures listening to new music is that I never had to read any lecture on how to like and enjoy it. That happened spontaneously because most of it spoke (speaks) with immediacy to me.

It doesn't suit your narrative that people can listen to music from the middle ages right up to the present and know immediately whether they like it. Or not.

It is very much a part of my "narrative," as you put it. The musics of the past are all familiar, whether we happen to have heard any particular piece or not. So it's easy to know whether you like something or not. So easy that it seems natural as well.

But my first experiences with twentieth century musics were very positive. I knew instantly that I liked what I was hearing and only wanted more. As I got more, I quickly found individual pieces that I did not like. That had no more effect on my liking new music generally than hearing Chopin or Bellini did on my liking classical music generally.

Those quotes you provide by "a critic" about Beethoven et. al are just folderol. Those quotes have never appeared in any scholarly texts I've read on music - and I've read a great many.

You can find them in Jacques Barzun's Berlioz and the Romantic Century. As I recall, they are in volume one and in a footnote. Sorry I cannot do better than that. I moved to Europe in 2012 and move from one place to another every three months, so I cannot carry around a lot of heavy books, and even light books get heavy pretty quickly if you get enough of them together.

I'm not really trying to persuade you to listen to new music. What I am doing is trying to persuade everyone that disliking anything is no basis for concluding that something is worthless. As in my reference to Chopin. I dislike Chopin, but so what? Chopin is obviously and inarguably one of the greats. I lose. But "oh well." I like quite a lot of other things. One thing I do not do--a thing that many people do indeed do when it's new music that's on the line, and that is use my dislike as a basis for arguing what a terrible composer Chopin is. It's that type of argument I'd like to see disappear, forever. Beyond that, what you like or dislike is entirely up to you, just as it always was. As it should be.

[some guy]

Any or all of this may be useless to you, but I'm not making a general statement, I'm talking about me.

I found it quite useful and mostly pretty encouraging as well.

[Belle]

If somebody considers something worthless, no matter what the basis, then subjectively it IS worthless - be that music, literature, friendship, marriage, assets, a political leader or party. A thing or person or ideology only has worth or merit or value if the society/person/institution THINKS it does and is willing to accord respect. That may be entirely subjective but it is the way the human race operates. Shakespeare wrote about it: "There is nothing good or bad but thinking makes it so".

Many people I've known throughout my life dislike/d serious music but most (if you drilled down) accorded it the cultural capital that they believed it held. But it was worthless TO THEM personally so much so that they were not willing to argue about it!! That doesn't make THEM worthless people!!

I'm not sure about the point you're actually making in adopting this line; people are turning away from certain types of music but your line is that that music has worth and value. And....?

[Rach3]

I don't like Bach cantatas,gin martinis, or Boulez piano sonatas, but those facts do not prohibit me from enjoying immensely other Bach,the odd straight Tanqueray on the rocks, or Werner-Henze's PC's. I " like " what I like, usually try not to pass judgment on what I dont ( Trump aside ), and usually value my remaining time on Earth enough not to spend too much time pursuing further or revisiting or "learning" that which I do not like. I suspect a generation of "baby boomers" , as are some ( many ? ) here, raised on telephone operators and tonality, will have different reactions to " new music" than a generation raised on cell phone apps and techno rock.

[maestrob]

I don't like Bach cantatas,gin martinis, or Boulez piano sonatas, but those facts do not prohibit me from enjoying immensely other Bach,the odd straight Tanqueray on the rocks, or Werner-Henze's PC's. I " like " what I like, usually try not to pass judgment on what I dont ( Trump aside ), and usually value my remaining time on Earth enough not to spend too much time pursuing further or revisiting or "learning" that which I do not like. I suspect a generation of "baby boomers" , as are some ( many ? ) here, raised on telephone operators and tonality, will have different reactions to " new music" than a generation raised on cell phone apps and techno rock.

Well said.

Taste is just that: taste! I happen to love Bach's cantatas, and Malbec wine (no straight gin for me, thanks! ). Being occasionally curious about recent music, I buy the occasional CD, but am usually disappointed: my fault, I'm sure. Music without harmony and time signatures just doesn't grab me, whether it's classical or jazz. Never has. So be it.

[Rach3]

Being occasionally curious about recent music, I buy the occasional CD, but am usually disappointed

Here's a cd of solo piano music by composer Henry Martin written between 1980 and 2007 you may enjoy:
https://tinyurl.com/y4lnhsbt
Also at YT:
https://tinyurl.com/y3jm83ex

[lennygoran]

You might apply the same argument about food. You could actually persuade people to eat all their greens and for them to like and appreciate them. But I wouldn't gamble on the success of that strategy.

Belle you sure got that right! Regards, Len

[some guy]

The opening post of this thread was an answer to an implied question: are there any standards that apply to new music, or is it just "anything goes"? The answer was "yes, there are standards that apply to new music, for both listeners and the music itself."

That is, even though new music cannot be usefully judged by standards of the past (nothing anywhere at any time can be usefully judged by inappropriate standards), there are ways of understanding even new things and of deciding, if you must, whether any given new thing has any value or not. More importantly, there are standards for listening, and listening to something new has to done even more carefully than listening to something that has become familiar.

None of that has anything to do with taste. Taste does come up in that opening post, but only in order to point out that taste is not a substitute for standards.

None of that has anything to do with trying to convince people to like new music, either. People will like whatever they want, for a variety of reasons. ("You're not going to like everything.")

The point of the opening post can be boiled down to this: "Just don't bash the things you don't like as if your not liking them is a criticism of them." That is, that post is about exactly what it says it's about, standards, not only what the standards are but what things are inappropriate to be used as standards (the very things, ironically enough, that are most frequently used as just that).

Of course, you may talk about taste and about putative attempts to force you to like things you don't like all you want, both off this thread and on. Just that you're off-topic if you do is all....

[John F]

music cannot be usefully judged by standards of the past (nothing anywhere at any time can be usefully judged by inappropriate standards)

That's your position in a nutshell - very neatly put. But who says the "standards of the past," however these are defined, are "inappropriate," and why are they? To dismiss the radical atonality of Schoenberg and his school because it violates the principles of functional harmony before and since is certainly a conservative view (we don't hear much of it these days), but it's not irrational.

The issue turns on what music is. After John Cage and 4′33″, which is a mime that's silent except for incidental noise in the hall and from outside it, it seems there is nothing that can't be called music. Whether it actually is music is a subject for many books, not a CMG post, and I'll leave it at that.

[Belle]

"Just don't bash the things you don't like as if your not liking them is a criticism of them."

This is gobbledygook. If people don't like something the odds are they're not going to be interested in 'criticizing' it anyway, apart from just dismissing it when questioned or commenting. Your comment actually develops no argument; merely functioning as an instruction as to the kind of judgment you deem fit.

"...(nothing anywhere at any time can be usefully judged by inappropriate standards)". On what basis and/or by whom will "inappropriate" be decided? Entirely subjective, since there is no objective definition of 'inappropriate': it's purely a value judgment.

If you judge the standards of music by Mozart against that of Elvis Presley that's probably 'inappropriate' but if you're talking exclusively about the use of melody and tonality it may be 'appropriate' or useful - depending on your thesis/comparison etc. Again, I cannot see how any of these points of yours develop an argument at all. I must state plainly that from my point of view it's mostly rhetoric. And, of course, you are entitled to that.

And I do agree with JohnF and his statement: it seems there is nothing that can't be called music. If I may, I'd like to stretch that idea just a little tangentially and say that a belief in everything is a belief in nothing.

[some guy]

"Just don't bash the things you don't like as if your not liking them is a criticism of them."

If people don't like something the odds are they're not going to be interested in 'criticizing' it anyway....

Classical music forums, as I believe you already know, are full of expressions of personal dislike masquerading as legitimate and even trenchant criticisms of the music itself. Or, to put it more as it appears, classical music forums are full of criticisms of music that turn out to be, upon examination, nothing more than expressions of personal dislike.

On what basis and/or by whom will "inappropriate" be decided? Entirely subjective, since there is no objective definition of 'inappropriate': it's purely a value judgment.

On the basis of logic. Inappropriate defines itself--criticizing a Brahms symphony because it doesn't have a harpsichord continuo is to apply a criteria that is inappropriate. Many people prefer baroque music, generally, to late romantic music. Which is certainly subjective and just as certainly normal, as it would be to prefer late romantic music to baroque. Applying the practices of one to the other to find it inadequate is, however, just silly.

And I do agree with JohnF and his statement: it seems there is nothing that can't be called music. If I may, I'd like to stretch that idea just a little tangentially and say that a belief in everything is a belief in nothing.

Except that no one (no one that I know of, anyway) is promoting a belief in everything. What John's statement leaves out--and remember that I did warn about this--is the role of the listener. If a listener hears something, anything, and listens to it with intent and intensity, then that thing will be, for that listener, music. Mileage may vary....

That is how I came up years ago with a definition of music that includes everything important without devolving into nothingness: Sound organized by a composer or a performer or a listener or some combination of those three.

[Belle]

Brahms criticism for not having a harpsichord? You are working from the outer limits of probability and straining to make a coherent argument. "Inappropriate" is a value judgment. Might I suggest alternates if you feel you need to make this case; anachronistic, ineffective, counter-intuitive, redundant. None of those words drip with moral censure. And 'just silly' is a subjective 'non-critical' construction of your own. There are more things that the baroque has in common with 19th century music than it has not. That isn't the problem for either the music or the listener.

And "sound organized by a composer" would equally describe 'sonic art', used effectively to accompany film. The Foley artist being the prime example. I wouldn't call that music and no amount of debate could convince my ears otherwise. For me, music is special precisely because of its lack of ambiguity.

Again, this 'argument' of yours always becomes circular. It seems to run along these lines: music is anything I/we/others can define it as being (which is the locus of my comment about 'a belief in everything...') and any refusal to accept that is criticism based on personal taste and experience from ignorant people - who are not in a position to criticize it just because they don't like it - and this has nothing to do with judgment or fact. Something word-salady like that!!

Why do these discussions of yours about new music always devolve into circular philosophical musings designed to confuse and obfuscate? That's my take on it anyway; maybe I have a lower IQ than other people here!!

[Philip M]

Surely one judgement is - does a new work get played again and again and again..... for years?

I’ve heard many first performances over the years (thanks mainly to Simon Rattle), and only 2impressed me - and these are both still played today. They are both by Thomas Adès: Asyla and the opera The Tempest.

Pjilip

[lennygoran]

the opera The Tempest.

Philip we saw both his The Tempest and his Exterminating Angel at the Met-I liked Exterminating Angel better-go figure. Regards, Len

[Belle]

the opera The Tempest.

Philip we saw both his The Tempest and his Exterminating Angel at the Met-I liked Exterminating Angel better-go figure. Regards, Len

There is obviously much music of our time to be admired and which will exist in perpetuity. Next year I'll be presenting some of it to our music group, minus the circomlocutions of our acolyte here on CMG!!

[lennygoran]

Next year I'll be presenting some of it to our music group, minus the circomlocutions of our acolyte here on CMG!!

Belle I'll be looking for your presentations on youtube! Regards, Len [fleeing]

[Belle]

Next year I'll be presenting some of it to our music group, minus the circomlocutions of our acolyte here on CMG!!

Belle I'll be looking for your presentations on youtube! Regards, Len [fleeing]

Len, I don't have a Tube!!!

[barney]

Joining this conversation late. I think Someguy makes a pretty good case, that dislike is not in itself a criticism (rational) but an expression of preference. Bertrand Russell eventually admitted that in his view all moral judgment (probably more important than musical judgment) was merely subjective preference. But of course an expression of preference can include rational criticism - I like this because.
I have no ideological problem with new music, and enjoy some. I prefer music where I can identify a tune, development, harmony etc, but I am fine with Stravinsky, Webern, Ades and others. I particularly like the current Australian composer Brett Dean. As I said on another thread, I am not especially a fan of minimalism because life is too short, but that hasn't stopped me deriving tremendous pleasure from some minimalist works.
And, amid all of this, who gives a fig about what I think, other than me and my unfortunate wife who has to hear my choices in the background sometimes.

Sue wrote: "If audiences aren't adopting the music you love but are abandoning it in droves the problem isn't with the people. That's a basic principal of psychoanalysis."
You haven't caught up with the Communists, Sue. As Brecht wrote, if the people lose the confidence of the government, just dissolve the people and elect another.

[Belle]

Absolute gold!!

[barney]

I should have made clear he was being satirical. Here is the poem in full:

After the uprising of the 17th of June
The Secretary of the Writers' Union
Had leaflets distributed on the Stalinallee
Stating that the people
Had forfeited the confidence of the government
And could only win it back
By increased work quotas. Would it not in that case be simpler
for the government
To dissolve the people
And elect another?

I sometimes detect a hint of that with new music advocates - though not in any sense, I hasten to add, with "some guy" - that we should dissolve the classical music audience and construct another. An example of that is the director of the Royal Albert Hall (was it?) I referred to in another thread who felt we should abandon the canon and just play minorities (presumably including women, though they are not strictly a minority). The hall holds several thousand, 5544 to be exact, which it fills quite often, eg proms. Not sure her policy would do the same.

[Belle]

I'm very familiar with the work of Brecht, as a former Drama teacher (for a time) and his worderful theatre music, particularly this work!!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eUgkrlL8GkE

And I'm rather fond of this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aSLTvKC-P3Y

This afternoon I was watching the National Geographic channel on Foxtel and there was a documetary I hadn't seen about WW2, particularly the fall of Paris. Much of the footage had been taken by the Germans and it was beyond hideous. I saw footage of Jewish children in the Warsaw ghettos (Hitler's retribution for failing to win the Battle of Britain) and they were covered from head to foot in filthy rags and the Germans were strip searching them to make sure they didn't have scraps to eat. They were dancing to try and keep warm and were not to be given food. It reduced me to tears because those children were the same age as my grandchildren. After all these decades it still shocks me to the core. Right at this moment, today, I'm feeling angry about the Germans!! And I don't think it will ever go away until the baby boomer generation dies.

[Philip M]

Lenny

I saw both the world premiere productions at Covent Garden and preferred The Tempest. Perhaps because it had a more traditional structure with obvious arias, duet, trios etc. But I did like the live sheep in The Exterminating Angel!

Adès is an amazing talent. A superb pianist and conductor as well as composer - and he’s a really nice modest guy.

Philip

[John F]

I thought well of "The Tempest" too, though the Met would possibly have done better to pick up the Covent Garden production as its own by Gelb favorite Robert Lepage was lacking in magic. But after the first run of 8 performances in 2012, it hasn't been revived - unusual, as the Met almost always revives a new production soon if only to amortize its cost over more performances. The opera does present a casting difficulty; Ariel is for such a high soprano that there can't be many who can manage it. Even so, the lack of a follow-up is disappointing. Has "The Tempest" stayed in any opera house's repertoire after a first run? Other than Covent Garden.

[lennygoran]

>I saw both the world premiere productions at Covent Garden and preferred The Tempest. Perhaps because it had a more traditional structure with obvious arias, duet, trios etc. But I did like the live sheep in The Exterminating Angel!<

Philip yeah-the sheep were a great touch-pity what happened to them. I VCR'ed the Tempest when it was shown on PBS and have to find time this season to replay it on my TV-it was only my first seeing of it and maybe I'll like it better this time. Regards, Len

[barney]

I'm very familiar with the work of Brecht, as a former Drama teacher (for a time) and his worderful theatre music, particularly this work!!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eUgkrlL8GkE

And I'm rather fond of this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aSLTvKC-P3Y

This afternoon I was watching the National Geographic channel on Foxtel and there was a documetary I hadn't seen about WW2, particularly the fall of Paris. Much of the footage had been taken by the Germans and it was beyond hideous. I saw footage of Jewish children in the Warsaw ghettos (Hitler's retribution for failing to win the Battle of Britain) and they were covered from head to foot in filthy rags and the Germans were strip searching them to make sure they didn't have scraps to eat. They were dancing to try and keep warm and were not to be given food. It reduced me to tears because those children were the same age as my grandchildren. After all these decades it still shocks me to the core. Right at this moment, today, I'm feeling angry about the Germans!! And I don't think it will ever go away until the baby boomer generation dies.

Lotte Lenya's performance is fascinating. And look at the picture on the clip - isn't her finger burning. 3d opera is brilliant.
I well understand how upset you would be after watching the Warsaw ghetto. It's astounding how cruel we can be. But I didn't realise until another doco on the History channel a couple of years ago that Germans in Eastern Europe suffered the worst ethnic cleansing in history - more than 8 million kicked out. Vast numbers killed or died. Plus, of course, the occupation. Plenty of suffering in return.
And this from your first sentence - "worderful". Probably not deliberate(?), but delightful in any case.

[John F]

And on the other hand there's Oskar Schindler, as in Steven Spielberg's "Schindler's List" which I gather is the true story. And acts of heroism such those by as Sophie and Hans Scholl of the White Rose. They don't balance out - nothing balances out crimes against humanity - but should nonetheless be kept in mind before condemning "the Germans" en masse.

[Belle]

And on the other hand there's Oskar Schindler, as in Steven Spielberg's "Schindler's List" which I gather is the true story. And acts of heroism such those by as Sophie and Hans Scholl of the White Rose. They don't balance out - nothing balances out crimes against humanity - but should nonetheless be kept in mind before condemning "the Germans" en masse.

Of course, but it's difficult watching those millions cheering Hitler as London was bombed day and night, week in and week out. The French people marching in their tens of thousands to escape Paris. And they destroyed Europe twice in the space of 30 years! The acts of heroism in Schindler's List were, for me, completely swamped by the most appalling behaviour of the majority. I have to admit I do find it hard to forgive the Germans and a woman said to me in 2011 on a train from Copenhagen to Berlin "when will we be forgiven; how many years?". My answer was and is 'the death of the baby boomer generation'.

One of the most moving of war films that I ever saw was Louis Malle's "Au revoir les Enfants".

All of it, even single horror, is testament to the old dictum "be careful what you wish for"!! I think the frightening element to all this is that we're all capable of it given particular cirumstances!!

[barney]

Why the baby boomers? They by definition bear no blame.

[John F]

Why the baby boomers? They by definition bear no blame.

Quite right. It's 74 years since the end of the war and the Nazi Party. Hardly anyone is still alive who came of age and can be assigned responsibility. Both German and Japanese societies have long since been transformed from what they were to exemplary democracies, and Germany (though not Japan) has admitted its guilt and tried to make amends in many ways. Have you been to the Jewish Museum in Berlin? It was built and is operated and funded by the German federal government.

I'm not saying that Belle is wrong to feel as she does. Our feelings are our own. But as one who has often been to Germany since the 1950s and knows quite a few German people, I can't blame them for what their parents and grandparents did or collaborated in during those terrible 12 years.

[Belle]

I'm not talking about baby boomers carrying 'blame'. They are the people our age whose families, relatives and the like suffered and died in that war (grandfathers/mothers and friends of our parents) and whose memories and stories we've all heard since childhood ensure we won't (can't) forget what Germany did in a hurry. And, John, 74 years doesn't seem a long enough time to wipe away THAT level of evil.

When the baby boomer generation dies our children will be one whole step removed from it all. That's what I meant. The woman asked me on the train and that was my answer.

[John F]

...The people our age whose families, relatives and the like suffered and died in that war (grandfathers/mothers and friends of our parents) and whose memories and stories we've all heard since childhood ensure we won't (can't) forget what Germany did in a hurry. And, John, 74 years doesn't seem a long enough time to wipe away THAT level of evil.

Nobody is talking about "wiping away" anything that happened in the past, but rather allowing it to take its place in history. 74 years - three generations - is indeed a long time to nurse an open wound for those, most of us, who suffered no personal losses in the Holocaust and Japanese atrocities such as the Bataan death march. Or so I believe. You feel differently and I respect that without accepting it as generally true.

[Belle]

I've got living relatives who were in WW2 so it's still fresh in our family's memory.

[barney]

I understand that. In some ways it remains the defining event in my life, though I was born in 1955. It just dominated my understanding, informed my worldview. Dozens and dozens of Dutch relatives died in the concentration camps, and I have sought to understand how such a thing could happen. My grandmother returned to Holland in 1939 and urged them to leave, but it was too big a step.
As you wisely said above, Sue, we are all capable of atrocious behaviour if the circumstances are right. I don't think I'm capable of herding people into gas ovens, or seeking to humiliate someone just because of race, but it's easy to make such a claim when it has never been tested.
When, as a young backpacker, I spent a little time in Germany I often wondered what old people I saw did during the war. And I worry that the rise of the right in German elections shows that the lessons have not been learned - but they haven't been learned anywhere else either.

[lennygoran]

I've got living relatives who were in WW2 so it's still fresh in our family's memory.

Belle I am concerned when I read something like this though-and of course there's Trump and his fine people on both sides! Regards, Len




Has Germany Forgotten the Lessons of the Nazis?

The country’s culture of remembrance is crumbling.

By Paul Hockenos

Mr. Hockenos is the author, most recently, of “Berlin Calling: A Story of Anarchy, Music, the Wall, and the Birth of the New Berlin.”

April 15, 2019



BERLIN — The reunification of Germany, in 1990, was a moment of exalted pride for the postwar federal republic. After decades of warning that a united country would resurrect the horrors of the 20th century, its neighbors and allies, many of them former battlefield foes, came around to accept and even welcome it. That’s in large part because, during those same decades, West Germany had undertaken a self-administered “Vergangenheitsbewältigung,” a mouthful of a German word that translates as something like “the overcoming of the past,” and refers to the country’s collective effort to grapple with the causes and legacies of the Nazi era.

It was a painful, halting process, but it helped transform Germany from pariah state to the moral leader of continental Europe. In recent years, though, the achievements of the postwar era have come under scrutiny. “Our culture of remembrance is crumbling,” Germany’s foreign minister, Heiko Maas, said recently.

The most damning evidence is the hard-right Alternative for Germany party, which surged into the Bundestag in 2017; in parts of eastern Germany it is the most popular party. The AfD is riding a shocking rise of German anti-Semitism and xenophobia. Forty percent of Germans say it’s right to blame Jews for Israel’s policies in the Middle East. In my neighborhood in Berlin, and others across the country, people wearing Jewish headgear are harassed on the street. And in the aftermath of the refugee crisis of 2015-16, many Germans — including mainstream, middle-class citizens — embraced the far right’s premises. In surveys, ever more say they desire an authoritarian leader and distrust liberal democracy.

The AfD gives cover to expanded expressions of intolerance and hate. In the Bundestag, the party’s members speak about foreigners, the Holocaust and Muslims in a way that a decade ago would have triggered a full-blown scandal — but that today is commonplace. They downplay the significance of the Nazi era, and demean efforts to reconcile with the past, like the Holocaust memorial in Berlin. Popular TV shows and best sellers set in the Nazi era treat Germans as victims, not perpetrators. At the same time, 40 percent of young Germans say they know very little or nothing about the Holocaust.

Agree to disagree, or disagree better? We'll help you understand the sharpest arguments on the most pressing issues of the week, from new and familiar voices.

“We were so sure that we’d learned our lesson, and what is not allowed cannot happen. We thought serious anti-Semitism was the past,” said Andreas Eberhardt, director of Remembrance, Responsibility and Future, a Berlin-based foundation concerned with historical remembrance. “But now we’re rethinking things.”

What went wrong?

There’s no question that Germany’s efforts to overcome its past were sincere and largely effective. But they also came with their own blind spots.

One was the assumption that Germany’s treatment of the past was as thorough as many believed. New research shows that far fewer Nazis were brought to justice in the immediate postwar years than previously thought. Indeed, just as the ’60s-era students charged, former Nazis occupied many positions of authority — as teachers, judges, media professionals and even politicians — for many decades after the war, transmitting their values with them.

And while the Germans laudably focused on the country’s anti-Semitic legacy, they overlooked other aspects of the Nazis’ genocidal racism, like its anti-Slavism, the genocide of Roma and the incarceration of homosexuals in concentration camps. Until recently, Germans paid scant attention to their country’s first genocidal campaign, in colonial-era southwestern Africa, which bolstered the racist foundations for Nazi ideology. Such selective moral reckoning left room for racism to fester.

Nor did Germany ever eradicate deep-seated prejudices toward outsiders. Even as it brought in millions of guestworkers from Turkey in the 1960s, it long resisted integrating them, let alone opening its culture to include non-ethnic Germans. Germany praised itself for facing its Nazi past, but it practiced widespread discrimination against immigrants. “The clash over the Merkel government’s refugee policy,” argued German historian Norbert Frei, referring to the protests and xenophobic outbursts following the summer 2015 influx of refugees, “was simply a welcome occasion to revitalize national-conservative and völkisch thinking that had been socially suppressed over decades but had never disappeared.”

Then there’s the split history of East and West Germany. East German Communists proceeded more rigorously in their postwar purging of Nazis, and its leaders too quickly proclaimed that they had eradicated all vestiges of fascism in its territory. They told East Germans that they were the anti-fascist victors — guilty of nothing — and that West Germany, a caldron of old Nazis, was just a scaled-back version of the Third Reich. And the East, despite its own, smaller influx of foreign workers (mostly from fellow Communist countries like Vietnam), did an even worse job of promoting diversity and ethnic tolerance.

Ironically, the fall of Communism and the terms of reunification made all of this worse. Even as Germany was winning praise as a model cosmopolitan society, it was struggling to incorporate millions of former citizens of a fallen dictatorship. Thirty years later, the former East Germany is a hotbed of xenophobia and the far right.

The passing of time doesn’t help, either. Today, millions of Germans were not even born when East Germany fell; to them, the Nazi era feels like ancient history. They struggle to see why they should identify Hitler’s barbarism with their lives. With the World War II generation mostly gone, the school lessons on the Holocaust and Nazism are taught secondhand, the tone often pedantic and their rituals rote.

Add to this mix the trauma and indignity that many eastern Germans experienced as westerners took over their culture and economy, the disorienting effects of globalization, and the resentment stemming from the ever-wider discrepancy between the haves and the have-nots in Germany, and it’s hardly surprising that Germany is facing what was once thought impossible: not a new Nazism per se, but rather a proliferation of hard-right movements and clusters, the latter even found in police and army units, and a new tolerance for racist ideas and violent hooliganism.

None of this is to demean postwar Germany’s achievement: As partial as its processing of the past has been, it shaped generations of enlightened, liberal, self-critical citizens. Among its errors, though, was the assumption that history could ever be “mastered” and the process wound down. Learning from history, it seems, is an exercise in democracy that can never stop.






https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/15/opin ... nazis.html

[John F]

Hockenos is determined to take a dim view of everything he possibly can. No question but that the unification of free West Germany and Communist East Germany was and remains difficult, and the massive influx of low-wage Turkish workers under Germany's open borders policy has aroused hostility from the right, as the United States's Mexican border situation has in American politics. And 96 seats in the German parliament is an impressive number, until you realize that there are 709 seats and the Alternative for Deutschland is outnumbered in the opposition by liberal and leftist parties. There are extreme right nationalist parties in Austria, France, and doubtless other European countries, and they have some success in elections. But it's a long way from there to Germany in 1933.

[Rach3]

And I worry that the rise of the right in German elections shows that the lessons have not been learned - but they haven't been learned anywhere else either.

Trump buddies :

Trump/Putin
Trump/MBS
Trump/Erdogan
Trump/Orban
Trump/Netanyahu
Trump/Kim
Trump/Modi
Trump/Bolsonaro

Trump/Morrison (?)
Trump/Johnson (?)

Nobody from “ .... hole “ Africa apparently is a buddy.

40-45 % of American voters currently say they will vote for Trump in 2020.

We should probably move this discussion to "Corner Pub " ?

[Belle]

We can still appreciate the great German music, though, no matter what. That recent documentary I saw related how the military leadership was mostly populated by German aristocrats!! They hated Hitler but not enough to do anything about it. I have visions of them in those tailored uniforms, gloves and listening to Beethoven, Bach, Brahms and Wagner. The ultimate paradox.

The whole German story from WW1 and WW2 reminds me, at its simplest level, of the very naughty child in the classroom; you back a particular kind of child into a corner with punishment and discipline and they come out swinging in the worst possible way - and they're willing to hurt everybody. That's because they don't care as they have nothing left to lose!

[diegobueno]

I think it goes without saying that music composed recently will sound different than music composed 100 or 200 years ago, simply because people have different experiences, different means of expression and different sounds in their ears than people in earlier times. Any composer left to express the thoughts in their head in musical terms -- and this is their first obligation -- isn't going to be able to limit themselves to musical materials which worked well for Tchaikovsky. That would involve a lot of self-censorship: no unresolved dissonance, no tone clusters, no mixed meters, no blues, no rock or jazz licks, etc.

On the other hand a composer of today still has all of that old music in their head. It still has meaning, it still forms part of their thought process. It would involve a similarly gigantic amount of self-censorship to filter all of that out. Composers, just like listeners, are incapable of setting aside their listening experiences and expectations and one shouldn't expect them to do so. It's the interaction between the composer's and listeners' experiences and expectations with new ideas that gives the music meaning.

This is why "newness", as a basic principle of composition is so untenable. By requiring perpetual reinvention of the musical language from scratch, it prevents anything meaningful from being expressed.

[John F]

Agreed. In music as in language, newness is created by combining the familiar basic elements (pitch, words) in original ways. After composing 100 symphonies, Haydn could and did still create original works in the form, as Shakespeare could after writing 100 sonnets.

[diegobueno]

Agreed. In music as in language, newness is created by combining the familiar basic elements (pitch, words) in original ways. After composing 100 symphonies, Haydn could and did still create original works in the form, as Shakespeare could after writing 100 sonnets.

Right. And at the same time new elements should not be rejected out of hand. One should always leave oneself open to something which could not be created by combining the familiar basic elements. You can count on composers to come up with such things.

[barney]

I'm happy for composers to come up with anything they want. I admire their inventiveness, by and large. The question for me is what will I listen to? And that - surprise, surprise - turns out to be subjective. there are 21st century composers I listen to, but the bulk of my listening will inevitably be from the time between Bach and Shostakovich. I want to listen mostly to the music I already I know I love, because there is so much of it, but I also don't want to ossify entirely.

[barney]

We can still appreciate the great German music, though, no matter what. That recent documentary I saw related how the military leadership was mostly populated by German aristocrats!! They hated Hitler but not enough to do anything about it. I have visions of them in those tailored uniforms, gloves and listening to Beethoven, Bach, Brahms and Wagner. The ultimate paradox.

The whole German story from WW1 and WW2 reminds me, at its simplest level, of the very naughty child in the classroom; you back a particular kind of child into a corner with punishment and discipline and they come out swinging in the worst possible way - and they're willing to hurt everybody. That's because they don't care as they have nothing left to lose!

There were several attempts besides the well-known Stauffenberg plot. Hitler had extraordinary luck, or amazing instincts or whatever....

[barney]

And I worry that the rise of the right in German elections shows that the lessons have not been learned - but they haven't been learned anywhere else either.

Trump buddies :

Trump/Putin
Trump/MBS
Trump/Erdogan
Trump/Orban
Trump/Netanyahu
Trump/Kim
Trump/Modi
Trump/Bolsonaro

Trump/Morrison (?)
Trump/Johnson (?)

Nobody from “ .... hole “ Africa apparently is a buddy.

40-45 % of American voters currently say they will vote for Trump in 2020.

We should probably move this discussion to "Corner Pub " ?

Yes, and Trump enemies: NATO, Germany and no doubt more. FBI perhaps?Department of Justice?

[Belle]

I'm happy for composers to come up with anything they want. I admire their inventiveness, by and large. The question for me is what will I listen to? And that - surprise, surprise - turns out to be subjective. there are 21st century composers I listen to, but the bulk of my listening will inevitably be from the time between Bach and Shostakovich. I want to listen mostly to the music I already I know I love, because there is so much of it, but I also don't want to ossify entirely.

Please do explain to us the process of "partial ossification".

[barney]

Surely it's a process over time? We are not snap-ossified, like frozen peas.

[Belle]

Surely it's a process over time? We are not snap-ossified, like frozen peas.

It was a joke!!!

[Rach3]

One should always leave oneself open to something which could not be created by combining the familiar basic elements. You can count on composers to come up with such things.

Suggested listening:

Piano music of Guy Sacre ( 1948 - ),pianist Billy Eidi, my Timpani cd released 1995:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0r0XmFx ... Zbx7PDNtXI

An acquired taste, best about 2 works at a time, then the Preludes complete,repeated hearings needed, but rewarding, for me.With the Chopin, Faure , Shostakovich preludes, Prokofieff "Visions" earlier, some courage to do his own 24 preludes ca. 1989, Sacre closer to Prokofieff, with an occasional nod to the others ( I think ).