Impromptu video discussing suitability of songs at Mass.
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Excellent points Adam. I do confer. I was enrolled at the Peabody Conservatory back in the 80's or so, and they had ... uh hum... "moved beyond" the staff at that point in time. For the composers of that era, graph paper was their blank canvas (manuscript) of choice! Well, I must humbly admit that I quickly moved beyond the Peabody within a year, and I never looked back.
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Erik really hits the nail on the head, especially if the department seeks to integrate theory with sight singing (as most do).
Now that I think about it, I believe Ian Quinn, a theorist at Yale, does something along these lines without using a textbook.
Although the chronological system seems logical from the outside, though, you have to consider that most students come to a music department with a vast knowledge of tonal repertoire. Even if all they know is pop music, they still have concepts for I-IV-V but need vocabulary/skills for deeper understanding. Teaching freshmen usually begins with meeting them where they are and taking them where you want them to go. Throwing them into a foreign musical vocabulary would alienate most, but that's not to say some schools shouldn't try out other methods. -
Music departments at Catholic colleges rarely do Catholic things when it comes to music, in the name of academic freedom. Some, like Marquette, don't even have a music department or music program in fine arts departments. There are a few notable exceptions. I keep a database of the musical infrastructure at all Catholic schools east of the Mississippi (haven't had time to go nationwide yet).
Of course this is part of the greater question of what a Catholic college really is/should be... -
Since we're now on "page 2," HERE IS THE VIDEO LINK AGAIN.
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re: Schoenberg's ridiculousness and graph-paper composing
Not at all related to Church Music, but while we're on the subject...
Let's assume you have the stamina to listen and enjoy it: Anyone notice the Schoenberg's ridiculousness got a lot less creative and enjoyable BEFORE he systematized twelve-tone technique? I've heard Pierrot Lunnaire in concert twice. It is by far his best work, and was written (I understand) before he invented a system to control his crazy self. Once he put it on a piece of graph paper, it got...really, really boring. -
I just realized I made a huge typo in my last comment.
I was trying to say that his stuff got worse AFTER he systemized it. That is- when he was still pushing classic theory past its limit, instead of utterly destroying it.
I think, yes- most 20th cent. music theory (and theoretical approaches to most other disciplines) were reactions to the horrors of WW1 and the dehumanization caused by industrialization.
Early 20th (serialism) was mostly about expressing the despair and chaos. Minimalism was part of the faux-mysticism that was an attempt to regain a sense of reverence/holiness/religiosity, but -being wholly secular and invented- was doomed to failure.
Anyway- God, no- None of that should be used in a church. I'd even be wary of putting most of it in a concert hall. The 20th century produced a handful of excellent composers, but "20th Century Theory" is a blight on the landscape, best left to the dustbin of history, along with Marxism, modern art, experimental theatre, and Esperanto. Unfortunately, it is now kept alive by a handful of aging musical elites who use it as a sort of atheist-composer shibboleth, guarding access to composition and theory departments against those who want to write music that sounds good and has a purpose.
Thankfully, the tide is turning. -
Adam, I did notice the inconsistency and was wondering with baited breath whether it was the crazy Schoenberg or the controlled Schoenberg you find so objectionable. Thanks for the clarification! I have to listen to the String Trio now...
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"I think, yes- most 20th cent. music theory (and theoretical approaches to most other disciplines) were reactions to the horrors of WW1 and the dehumanization caused by industrialization.
Early 20th (serialism) was mostly about expressing the despair and chaos. Minimalism was part of the faux-mysticism that was an attempt to regain a sense of reverence/holiness/religiosity, but -being wholly secular and invented- was doomed to failure."
Where does this stuff come from? Is the music of Arvo Pärt or Henryk Gorecki wholly secular? Are Klumpenhouwer networks reactions to WWI? Schoenberg wasn't even a "graph paper" composer along the lines of Milton Babbitt. Painting such broad pictures of musical history just isn't very productive.
Plus, isn't Schoenberg's "Survivor from Warsaw" great? One might argue that it even has a touch of Christian redemption. -
We (meaning, me, I suppose) planned a NO Mass for clergy and musicians with propers and singing the Arvo Pärt Berliner Messe ordinary, ad orientum, in the vernacular, moving to Latin for the Canon of the Mass. Still hope to do so someday.
As we drown in a sea of badly composed music written by composers who know that they are catering to a market, I'd suggest we place composers like Schoenberg on a pedestal.
Where's my CD of Verklärte Nacht?
Why we're still afraid of Schoenberg. -
Well, from 'chromaticism to emancipation,' he freed all the notes completely from tonality, and gave equality to each individual note, didn't he?
Individualism and relativism.
Does music and art reflect the 'culture ' of the time?
Nowadays creativity and interest in just sounds itself seem to overwhelm the beautty of art music. -
Verklärte Nacht- great call, Jonathan and Noel! Illustrates Adam's original point about Arnold aptly.
Out of curiosity, FNJ or anybody, does anybody else wonder, seriously, that contemporary "classical" composition is now mostly to be heard in films? Forget dorks like Newton Howard and the Glass-man, but the scores that Corigliano, alone, have composed for films like "Altered States" and "The Red Violin" meet my credentials and taste (don't flame me!) much greater than some of Penderecki's or Part's major works? Nyman, from Britain, as well for instance, or even the Newmans, Thomas and Randy?
Other than that, John Adams seems to be the pinnacle guy for the USofA now. "Oppenheimer" was incredible. And nw I understand that Rufus Wainwright has composed an opera to great critical reviews. He, whose father Loudon III wrote "Dead Skunk in the Middle of the Road."
It's a brave new world.
PS. Adam, don't I get a shout out for my whisper to you about serialism. Dude? -
off-topic
Zwölftonwerbung - Twelve tone commercial
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LACCAF04wSs
on-topic
the Jeff O video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pVKCCRWlF7A -
A loud amen to Frogman's statue proposal! And anyway, Francis, GIA & OCP dont really do justice to Stravinsky, either, who labored to enrich the Catholic liturgy. Btw, has anyone here done Stravinsky's credo? The 1948 Latin version is a falso bordone type setting and, from what I can gather without having succeded in getting it from interlibrary loan, the Slavonic first edition uses a similarly intimidating notation. I wonder how much the revised full notation (and IS's recording) is a reworking: talk about 12 123 music! I hope someone approaches Boosey & Hawkes about an English edition.
AS wrote little sacred music (his De Profundis is one of the great Hebrew psalm settings) but I can commend this as a Christmas prelude that would cause little eye batting:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yR94CiqtFLs&feature=related -
Charles- I didn't realize it was a "whisper" and no one else saw it. Sorry.
*Ahem* Yes- you were right, and your comments were both helpful and enlightening!
Anyway, to those who mentioned several excellent composers and works in defense of 20th century music:
I said that the 20th cent. had some excellent composers... it's "20th Century Theory" that is so... awful.
I haven't yet fully congealed my thoughts on the matter, but I've been toying with the notion that Wagner, Schoenberg, and the other innovators of the late 19th/ early 20th centuries (and harmonic progressivism in general) has been characterized by two schools of thought: a "hermeneutic of continuity" and a "hermeneutic of rupture."
(You can see where this is going).
Those who have viewed innovation in musical theory through a lens of rupture, who saw "Serialism" as some kind of triumph over older forms of harmonic thought, were mostly musical/intellectual elites, who, for the last century, have hijacked concert halls and university theory/composition departments. They saw value in all things new-fangled (from 12-tone to Chance Music to Minimalism) and were suspicious of any composers they viewed as old-fashioned or backwards.
But all along there have been those who viewed the innovations as part of a natural progression in harmonic thought- those with a "hermeneutic of continuity." They continued within the traditions (the "patrimony," if you will) of classical western musical thought, even if it meant ridicule. They suffered through 12-tone classes as students and serenely endured Ives concerts as Professors. Some got angry and retreated into a reactionary stance. The more generous and open of them have incorporated elements of contemporary theory into their traditional framework, viewing the dynamic between the new order and the older use as mutually enriching and beneficial...
Maybe this is a stretch?
You of the deeper thoughts- what say you? -
Actually I quite like Ives. I find him very clever.
I concur with your assessment of continuity vs. rupture. In the end, as Qoheleth wrote, there is no new [music] under the sun. There are only these twelve notes, see, and it's just a matter of how you combine them. There are also certain laws of nature that music has to obey - thinking of the series of natural overtones, for instance, and the instinctive reaction to dissonance.
You may recall that when asked his favorite American composer, he named Gershwin. The interviewer was shocked. How could that be? Schoenberg answered: "We use the same notes." -
Adam
I totally concur. As a student of composition (and especially continuing the sacred music tradition of harmony, melody and counterpoint) I was eschewed by most of my contemporaries (profs and students) and found myself composing in a cave for 30 years.
Richard
Although I like Stravinsky and believe he is probably the greatest composer of 20th Cen., I don't think his music ever came to be fitting for the liturgy, but I am not aware of all his sacred works, so I may stand corrected if shown the right musics. But the few that I have heard were composed as the music to be the entire focus, and not the liturgy. I have read that he struggled with this himself as his treatment of the text was used as an "effect" and not a "prayer", so to speak. -
Stravinsky didn't write much liturgical music, but in the 1920s and early 1930s he was supremely interested in the relationship between Catholic philosophy (and theology) and music. Oedipus Rex and Apollon musagete, for example, are based on principles expressed in Jacques Maritain's earliest neo-Thomist book on aesthetics and artistic production, Art et scolastique (1920). Indeed, Stravinsky's own Poetics of Music is filled with references to Maritain's work through the ghostwriting efforts of Maritain disciple Alexis Roland-Manuel. I might add that the text to Oedipus Rex was translated into Latin by Jean Danielou, who was an official "expert" at V-II and later elevated to Cardinal, if that tells you anything about the level of Stravinsky's involvement with French Catholic culture of the '20s and '30s.
Of course the man himself was indifferent toward religion (mistress and all), but that's another story... -
Dshadle
...and there cannot be "another story" in the separation of a man from his art (as many know on this forum) in this peculiar disassociation that I continually address. My best comparison is counterfeiting. It looks like money, it smells like money and a lot of people may even use it in the exchange of goods or services. But in the end, it will be found to be a hollow shell. I do not know nor can I judge the state of anyone's soul, but
"we will know them by their fruits." (Jesus Christ)
...and some of Stravinskys music are definitely tied to promoting the "dark side", so to speak.
His "Rite of Spring" is a blatant Satanic ritual, for hell's sake! And I would wager that this music has had a far reaching impact on the spiritual and cultural disposition of our global society of which most are entirely naive or unaware.
"The painter Nicholas Roerich shared his idea with Stravinsky in 1910, his fleeting vision of a pagan ritual in which a young girl dances herself to death. Stravinsky's earliest conception of The Rite of Spring was in the spring of 1910. Stravinsky writes, "... there arose a picture of a sacred pagan ritual: the wise elders are seated in a circle and are observing the dance before death of the girl whom they are offering as a sacrifice to the god of Spring in order to gain his benevolence. This became the subject of The Rite of Spring."[2] (wikipedia)
Wagner was in much the same state of mind and heart in the practice of his craft. His music was in fact utilized as an alchemical apothecary to manipulate the mind and the attrocious practices that emerged in the Hitlerian episode. Wagner was a master in this regard as he managed to unplant the sacred nature of music, sever it from the liturgy (see his philosophy of Gesamtkunstwerk) and rebirth it in his new false church for which he composed his operas. (veiled dark rites)
From my limited dealing with opera singer friends who became part of the cultural fabric, I would venture that a lot of dark things (spiritually rotten fruits) are still emerging from the cult of Wagnerian musics and it's culture again of which most are unaware.
Although they are all painted as just "a fun night on the town" they have far reaching effect especially for the ignorant or those who are quick to dismiss it as hogwash.
Just like pornography taken through the eyes can destroy a soul, so too can the consumption of unholy music through the ears. -
I don't think I suggested that we could separate Stravinsky from his art. Quite the contrary: his art from the period in question fully reflected his interests and activities. The trouble with your Rite of Spring example is that people tend to change, as does their music. Stravinsky eventually gave up his religious bent.
Don't get me wrong. I'm far from defending Stravinsky. I think he was a total jerk, and there is well-documented evidence of that. I was simply trying to clarify his relationship to Catholicism, which you won't find on Wikipedia or any other published source, really.
A little bitter toward Wagner? I can't stand the man or his music.
Doug -
Not bitter toward Wagner. The man was lost and deceived. But exposing the works of darkness is the main way that we disarm them.
"For the fruit of the light is in all goodness and justice and truth: Proving what is well pleasing to God. And have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness: but rather reprove them. For the things that are done by them in secret, it is a shame even to speak of. But all things that are reproved are made manifest by the light: for all that is made manifest is light." Ephesians 5:11-14 -
I never thought of Wagner that way but that makes so much friggin' sense I can barely stand it.
I'm fascinated by how much impact 20th cent philosophy and art has had on a culture that has so little regard for philosophy or art. Most people haven't read the books or heard the music, and yet there is no denying that its poison has infiltrated their souls.
I wonder if there is a corollary here with beauty and virtue. For example, if a Cathedral or a monastery (or even a regular parish church) starts filling their corner of the earth with beautiful music and and sacred art, is there a benefit even to those who never have the chance (or the inclination) to experience it.
I read somewhere once that hidden reserves of gold, though unseen and uncirculated, provide the foundation for our economic system, and that similarly, mystics and holy people, unseen by the world, hidden away in monasteries and cloisters, provide a foundation of holiness for the Church in the world. Perhaps our resident musician/economist can expand or correct that line of thinking... -
This ad hominem line of attack is a bit unsettling to those of us realizing we'll have to give up Lassus and Mozart before Schoenberg and Stravinsky. Is the idea that the aims of the CMAA might be advanced by having Haugen tailed or finding out whether Haas writes secular stuff under a pen name? The church's historical willingness to forgive King David's murderous pecadillos as easily as Palestrina's madrigals suggests this might be barking up the wrong tree anyway.
In any case, it is not accurate to say that Stravinsky was "indifferent to religion". From Conversations:
Craft: Must one be a believer to compose [a mass}?
IS: Certainly, and not merely a believer in symbolic figures but in the Person of the Lord, the Person of the Devil, and the Miracles of the Church"
from Expositions & Developments:
"As I played through these rococo-operatic sweets-of-sin [Mozart's masses], I knew I had to write a Mass of my own, but a real one."
The Mass is exceptional among Stravinsky's output in that it was uncommissioned. Why a Catholic Mass? "I wanted my Mass to be used liturgically, an outright impossibility as far as the Russian Church was concerned, as Orthodox tradition proscribes the use of instruments in its services".
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