From: owner-stillpt-digest@smoe.org (stillpt-digest) To: stillpt-digest@smoe.org Subject: stillpt-digest V2 #3 Reply-To: stillpt@smoe.org Sender: owner-stillpt-digest@smoe.org Errors-To: owner-stillpt-digest@smoe.org Precedence: bulk stillpt-digest Thursday, January 6 2000 Volume 02 : Number 003 Today's Subjects: ----------------- Re: welcome [allenw ] Re: welcome [Todd Huff ] a note about replies [meredith ] m/20th Cent. ["Donald G. Keller" ] Re: m/20th Cent. ["David S. Bratman" ] Re: welcome ["Susan J. Kroupa" ] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 5 Jan 2000 17:01:36 -0600 (EST) From: allenw Subject: Re: welcome Glad to see the list is up! I must admit, I almost deleted the first messages unread, assuming them to be spam; the name "stillpt" means nothing to me. I see that I have to reply to all recipients to get the reply to the "stillpt@smoe.org" address. I expect this may cause confusion. Allen ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 5 Jan 2000 17:45:23 -0800 (PST) From: Todd Huff Subject: Re: welcome - --- allenw wrote: > Glad to see the list is up! I must admit, I > almost deleted the first > messages unread, assuming them to be spam; the name > "stillpt" means > nothing to me. > I see that I have to reply to all recipients to > get the reply to the > "stillpt@smoe.org" address. I expect this may cause > confusion. > Allen > I'm a bit confused myself and wonder if this is going out to everybody. No new episodes until the 18th, correct? Todd __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Talk to your friends online with Yahoo! Messenger. http://im.yahoo.com ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 05 Jan 2000 21:03:20 -0500 From: meredith Subject: a note about replies Hi! Don't worry, Todd, your note did go to everyone! All mailing lists at smoe.org are set up by default so that when you hit "reply" to a note you receive from the list, it goes to the sender of the original message, and not to the list proper. This is to prevent personal replies from accidentally going to the entire list. It does mean that you have to enter the list address every time you want to send something to the list, but it really does keep things neat and clean. Sorry to confuse anyone ... but it doesn't take that much to get used to. +==========================================================================+ | Meredith Tarr meth@smoe.org | | New Haven, CT USA http://www.smoe.org/~meth | +==========================================================================+ | "things are more beautiful when they're obscure" -- veda hille | | *** TRAJECTORY, the Veda Hille mailing list: *** | | *** http://www.smoe.org/meth/trajectory.html *** | +==========================================================================+ ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 5 Jan 2000 21:36:51 -0500 (EST) From: "Donald G. Keller" Subject: m/20th Cent. David: My instincts, despite our differences in taste, run more or less like yours on the important composers: Bach and Mozart (acknowledging Handel and Haydn just behind), Beethoven and (*sigh*) Wagner; and you have mostly sound arguments on your side in re the 20th century. I'm kind of surprised you didn't mention another "S," Sibelius; he was Constant Lambert's choice in =Music, Ho!=, and I remember rolling my eyes at the notion at the time, but in retrospect Sibelius has had considerable influence (along with Mahler and Shostakovitch) on the Northern (broadly designated) mostly-symphonists. (Including Maxwell Davies.) I have to plump with a dual crown for Schoenberg and Stravinsky; if for nothing else for the twin bombshells =Pierrot Lunaire= and =Le Sacre= (nearly simultaneous chronologically). The former is so =fundamentally= innovative that it sounds strange to this day. (Oddly enough, it =has= been influential, though, particulularly on Boulez, Maxwell Davies again, and Kurtag.) =Le Sacre=, conversely, though arguably a more infamous piece at the time, was assimilated much faster; it was standard-repertoire enough to be included in =Fantasia= in 1940. (Which reminds me. How irritating is it that =Fantasia 2000= is almost all music written before the =original= =Fantasia=?? The latest one I know for sure is Gershwin's =Rhapsody in Blue=, which is about 1936. Don't know the date for Shostakovitch's 2nd Piano Concerto, likely the very newest. I mean, c'mon--where's the Disney version of excerpts from =Pierrot Lunaire=?) Stravinsky a greater composer than Schoenberg? Hm. There's a lot of Stravinsky I don't like that much, especially in his neoclassical period (excepting =Symphony of Psalms=), and I like one piece that everyone seems to ignore, =Threni= (his largest 12-tone piece--and by the way the fact that Stravinsky was influenced, at last, by Schoenberg--or his pupil Webern--may mean something); but I don't love all of Schoenberg either. The fact that Schoenberg proved, in the end, to be a dead end is points off. (Still: the early minimalists began as serialists, and Cage was a--rather rebellious--Schoenberg pupil. And Berg was a great or near-great composer, and Webern far from negligible.) I think I rate it a tossup. As for Bartok, I love his music more than the other two; his string quartets are barely behind =their= strongest music in my estimation. But he sort of stands to them as Schubert does to Beethoven: obviously a composer of genius, but =just barely= a step behind. (And his legacy is Ligeti/Lutoslawski/Xenakis etc. etc., which is no mean thing.) The thing that is important about =both= Stravinsky and Bartok is the way they introduced rhythm, as a clearly-delineated element, back into classical music, which (I'm dead serious) prefigured rock'n'roll. Schoenberg's relentless contrapuntal textures don't quite accomplish the same thing. (And by the way, I know exactly what you mean about Cowell's =Quartet Romantic=; the difference for me is that it manifests as an exhilarating sense of rhythmic vertigo; there isn't =one= pulse but four, and you have to kind of "balance" on all of them. A fun ride.) As for Shostakovitch...I am very fond of his music, but I have to compare him to someone like Brahms; =maybe= a genius, but not having the cutting edge to hand; still the author of a great deal of impeccably excellent music. (His string quartets are bested only by Bartok's.) And his influence is as you say very strong. Well, that's basically the first half of the century. How about the second half? Are we too close? Maxwell Davies? Carter? Lutoslawski/Ligeti/Xenakis? Feldman? Capricious choices all; no clear winner. ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 5 Jan 2000 22:30:38 -0500 (EST) From: "David S. Bratman" Subject: Re: m/20th Cent. Don: I didn't mention Sibelius because I was looking for _the_ Composer of the Century, not trying to create a list of great & influential modern composers, on which he'd certainly belong. Lambert wasn't exactly trying to identify Sibelius as the Composer of the Century either, but as the Last Best Hope (to borrow a hackneyed phrase) of classical music, which is a slightly different thing. You answered your own question (why isn't there something like _Pierrot Lunaire_ in _Fantasia 2000?) with your comment that "it sounds strange to this day." Which fact is, more than serialism itself (Berg doesn't sound strange), where Schoenberg went wrong. I don't know about Schoenberg himself, but his propagandists were fully confident that by now we'd all be humming _Pierrot Lunaire_ on the street. It couldn't be, could it (I ask sarcastically), that the fact this didn't happen has something to do with popular alienation from avant garde music? And of course it pre-dates the original _Fantasia_ too ... _Rhapsody in Blue_ is 1924, a little earlier than you thought. And Shostakovich's 2nd Piano Concerto is 1957. That must be the most recent piece, but it's still well over the age (27) that _Le Sacre_ was at the time of the original _Fantasia_. Though (some of, not all) the early minimalists began as serialists, they abandoned it as a dead end: certainly Glass did. That rather proves the point. Brahms is my standing rebuttal to the claim that music must be avant-garde to be great. He might be the popular choice for Composer of the Late 19C, and I only named Wagner as a bow to the critical consensus. (Brahms influenced a lot of ruminative modern chamber music, but only a handful of symphonists.) But I don't see Shostakovich as the modern Brahms: far too wide-ranging and experimental, if not often precisely avant-garde, for that. And unquestionably a genius. Fortunately for my choice of century, much of his greatest work was after 1950, including most of his quartets, so I'm not going to worry about composers of later generations, about whom I agree that it's too soon to make that kind of sweeping judgment on. ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 05 Jan 2000 20:52:41 -0700 From: "Susan J. Kroupa" Subject: Re: welcome Now for a stupid question: what's digest form? And, just to be clear, do I hit reply if I want to reply only to the person who wrote the message I'm responding to, and type in stillpt@smoe.org if I want it to go to the group? Netscape seems to do this for me, I think. Sue meredith wrote: > > Hi! > > Martha inquired: > > >Hi. Is there going to be any way to get this list in digest form? I hope I > >hope I hope? > > Oh yes, of course. > > We added everyone who had provided their e-dress to Don to the loose-mail > form as a default. Changing this is very simple. > > Send a note to "majordomo@smoe.org" and paste the following into the > message body: > > unsubscribe stillpt > subscribe stillpt-digest > end > > If by chance you should ever miss something, every digest will be archived > at . > > Another administrative note, while I'm here: please make sure you're > subscribed using the *exact* address from which you plan to post. > Otherwise everything you post will be bounced to me for approval first. > > That should cover everything for now. :) Enjoy! > > P.S. Martha, I've already taken care of you. :) > > +==========================================================================+ > | Meredith Tarr meth@smoe.org | > | New Haven, CT USA http://www.smoe.org/~meth | > +==========================================================================+ > | "things are more beautiful when they're obscure" -- veda hille | > | *** TRAJECTORY, the Veda Hille mailing list: *** | > | *** http://www.smoe.org/meth/trajectory.html *** | > +==========================================================================+ ------------------------------ End of stillpt-digest V2 #3 ***************************