On the desiccated remains of the musical avant garde

[@berkefeil5646]

Here may be some reasons: (1) People think that composing complex avant-garde music will make them appear sophisticated. (2) They cannot bear struggling with the limitations of accessible ‘normal’ music, because deep inside, they lack the confidence and musical sensitivity. (3) conservatories keep treating postmodern composers like John Cage as if they are on some equal plateau with truly great composers like Rachmaninoff or Beethoven. They relativize everything to death. (4) people confuse aesthetic simplicity with simpleness. (5) they compose without soul

[@Invert_Scrub]

I would guess that it has more to do with many of these students not feeling comfortable in their own musical voices yet. So, they look to the most avant-garde developments and write derivatively in the hopes that they appear more sophisticated.

[@mattvigil]

This should be pinned

That's THE issue then isn't it? The feedback loop is the innovation rather than ACTUAL discovery of something else?

[@markoslavicek]

I see your argument and I raise you one more: it's not only the styles that universities nurture but also the ones they dismiss. Europe has a strong avantgarde tradition and if the students' personal tendecies are too removed from it (for example if they wanted to write more conventionally), they might not be able to get enrolled at all. Let us remember that one Rite-like scandal in post-War Darmstadt when the audience protested against the thirds and sixths.

[@elizavilla-cx6vd]

It will be great If you can make a video or serie of videos, or a masterclass about Brian Ferneyhough's music, specifically how to read his music, how deconstruct and study his scores to interpretate it, for example how to read Bone Alphabet and how to Sol-fa. Thanks

[@AlejandroN-z8z]

This is an amazing idea, this kind of music is difficult to read and study. We hope Samuel make it.

[@jonathanparrycomposer]

Spot on Samuel...It's hard to be brave and different. There is an orthodoxy in education, publishing and funding which gives the available money and performances to superficially complex music and is wary of anything else - so it's possible to make a living in that avant-garde world by being 'in the swim'. Dare to step outside it and integrate more direct material and you then run the risk of competing with genuinely 'popular' music where the streaming royalties would leave you penniless...I like both avant-garde and more direct styles if they're original, but it baffles me that 'edge cases' are what grab all the available sponsorship money, performances and prestige publishing - it just becomes a self-fulfilling avant-garde prophesy.

[@Tylervrooman]

(To anyone wondering, I was a Patron of Samuel for a while and probably sent more than half a dozen pieces to him and he is worth supporting, good feedback and insight!) I to wonder where I sit in these camps. 😵😵 my stuff isn't avant-garde... I think my musical style is nothing necessarily "new". I want to sound like if Bach played jazz and blues. Lol, always looking forward to your videos! Appreciate you!

[@bronktug2446]

Do you have examples of your work? What are your favourite Bach pieces?

[@Tylervrooman]

@@bronktug2446 All available for streaming and some score videos on my channel. I dig BWV 1080 and WTC are my current favorites but it's changed over the decades.

[@MartijnHover]

It is of course the inevitable fate of every "avant garde" to become the rear guard at some point. :-)

[@carpenterhillstudios8327]

It seems from my limited insular view that teh institution is a huge factor. Does this have to do with the academic position as either an adjunct to composing or its opposite- teaching as an adjunct to composing? Either way, it's a closed shop. I'm sure there are individuals who have musical expression as a vocation, who wish to instill that in students. In this strange environment where the will to fame and fortune is so overpowering, an individual voice born from who one is, is dangerous to that goal.

[@efilson7581]

I would love to read a book or an article by you breaking this down from a compositional viewpoint. I'm intrigued but am unfamiliar with some of the reference points.

[@AlejandroN-z8z]

You can read the book: The new music, The avant Garde since 1945 by Reginald Smith Brindle, to understand the categories that Samuel said.

[@efilson7581]

@@AlejandroN-z8z Thanks!

[@sethebrown]

You nailed it

[@Bashkii]

True! The 60's, 70's,80's avangarde serialism etc...is still doing a lot of damage and minimalism is already a relic. How about trying to compose big memorable melodies again?

[@matthewpublikum3114]

There are only a finite amount of techniques before it becomes indecipherable

[@neonwind]

This is most true. Human culture is a little lost, in these times. Maybe someone should create art to reflect that. A source of inspiration. Doubt.

[@jacksonelmore6227]

Whatever that 2016 MAGA vibe is… is WHAT I want to do to music, I want to MAKE MUSIC GREAT AGAIN, with a BASED tonal melodic symphony that transcends yet integrates the achievements of our canon, it must be as avant garde as it is accessible

[@he1ar1]

Sounds like Rousseau writing about baroque music. Sounds like Nietzsche describing Wagner. Over the top and too removed from society for society to remain interested in it. Too many people writing music scores to show to those that write music scores, that they can write music scores. They are writing art for others who write art. The art is not being for itself.

[@jacksonelmore6227]

@@he1ar1 insightful comment, I will explore that! But I agree, got to embrace the public zeitgeist with some empathy and graciousness (and swag) 🙏🎻

[@brandonacker]

I couldn't agree more

[@carsonfarley2560]

Because that's pushed and valued in academia . . .

[@johnpcomposer]

As though expecting that something new is just going to crop up any day now? I would like to know is style being copied or technique? And since so much experimental music of the kind you mentioned was about extended techniques and technology itself, I feel style got lost anyway in a kind of general feeling of an engineered music...

[@brendanward2991]

You misspelled _desiccated._

[@samuel_andreyev]

Oops! Fixed it

[@truBador2]

What style of music is THS? I dont know.. Millenial ll Fusion I think.

[@noelephantitis]

So a style has a sell-by date, and you're the determining factor on when it's defunct? Or is there something young composers "should" be doing instead? Who made you gatekeeper?

[@yat_ii]

What is porosity?

[@samuel_andreyev]

Frenchism :) porousness

[@christopherdivincenzo717]

This guy is definitely competent at saying very little but in an academic way. The Jordan Peterson of music!

[@fstover5208]

I tend to agree with your assessment, although over the past 20 years or so I'm seeing a lot of neo-romanticism especially among female composers.

[@NARCISALISPAHIC]

General decline it f civilization.

[@ethanb2554]

Maybe people should just stop composing. There's no sustenance in art for art's sake. Art always must be bound to something greater than itself.