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I know plenty of classical connoisseurs who would vehemently disagree with that post or even say that we have barely scratched the surface of endless possibilities for musical creation - but I do agree with you.
And what does it matter if a piece of music is old, as long as it is beautiful and inspiring? For me there is nothing more beautiful and inspiring than the musical creations of a bunch of long dead Germans and Austrians from the 1700s, 1800s and early 1900s. If humanity has ever made anything that approaches absolute perfection, it is some of that music.
Your point is well-taken; back in the day, I tended to regard the largest cultural influences of religion -- the RCC being arguably the biggest -- as retrograde examples of dry, dead, lifeless religion and I would have discounted the importance or even the desirability of their contributions to our culture. If anything, I have had a more objective view of that since leaving evangelicalism, not less. They were, to oversimplify it, "the establishment" and not to be trusted or overly credited with anything. I was a member of the anti-traditionalists, who claimed to be in direct touch with the spirit of god.
I was about to say I like your lack of diffidence about telling me I'm talking nonsense. I gave Atonal 15 years of opportunity to Speak to me. Now I'm "out". I still do hear some, and I can follow the development of the material, but I do groan at the sight of an orchestra playing a New Work with a huge kitchen suppliers' department.
One thing (amongts many) I got from atheism was understanding what you rationally had to justify by evidence and what, rationally, you absolutely don't have to; and artistic taste is one that you don't. If someone really is blown away even on an intellectual level by canvases of coloured squares called "Meal Ticket" or half an hour of "Plink, plonk", good for them. Jut leave me El Greco and Handel, even if he is setting passages about a Messiah taken way out of context.
Where did I say you were talking nonsense? If anything, I agree with you about music having reached the end of its evolution. I do not know much about music theory, at least for now, but judging by what I have heard of modern classical, I feel the same way.
15 years? That is longer than I have been listening to any classical music at all - only about six.
It's..ok, for what it is. A sort of Ballad he could sing about his Partner. He is just here singing about..something else. In an odd way it is like Bach would could use the same music to write about Pilate telling Jesus he can execute him and a father telling his daughter he's going to ban coffee.
Anway ...miles off topic, ....I found a vid on the 1200 BC bronze age collapse - the one that led to the end of the Canaanite states and the Hittites and allowed the Hebrews to come down from the hills where they herded their goats and the Edomites to move in from the Desert and the Amonnites to come from wherever they came frrom and of course start fighting over land. That (not the Exodus) was the 'Conquest'. What was it? I thought Thera, but that is too early. It ended the Cretan sea -empire but is the wrong date for the start of Israel. What did it? Nobody knows.
P.s warning. It looks interesting and I like the Idea of a collapse, leaving room for Israelites and Philistines to move in. But All at the same time - "within a generation" - is a bit dubious. They talk of the collapse of the Mykeneans and Minoans but the Mykeneans seemed to have occupied the Aegean after the destruction of the Minoan empiire and they were contemporary with the Hittites (interesting to think the Trojans might have been Hittite) and then they all vanished in the 1200's Egypt didn't vanish (as the vid so easily claims) but Merneptah did battle, Sorry mean Ramess III (not the 2nd) of course ...look I'm sorry for the of topic. If I need to I'll find a more appropriate thread, but this has to be said. ...
Ramesses 3rd did battle with the Aegean fall out of the 21th c collapse (the Sea peoples) and settled them in what would become Philistia. Yep the Philistines seem to have been the Mykeneans.
But hte point is this is too late for the Thera erruption if they are making that the explanation. There could have been another, somewhere else. The Med is full of volcanoes.
Last edited by TRANSPONDER; 08-14-2016 at 08:56 AM..
Wagner was my first love ever. His music is epic enough to have shaken me out of my ignorance regarding classical music supposedly being good only as a background for studying or at upscale restaurants. And the stories... I am a big Tolkien fan, and just at that time I had begun to become interested in the German language and culture. So I immediately fell in love with that whole Teutonic mythology of his - dragon-slaying heroes, the Ring of power out of the Rhine, etc...
Some time later I realized there were other musical works out there, just as epic (Bruckner, Mahler etc). And yet a while later I learned to appreciate classical music for its beauty and perfection, regardless of its grand scale or "epicness".
I read a book once by an evangelical Francis Schaeffer, called "How Should We Then Live: The Rise and Decline of Western Thought and Culture" where he linked the modern decline of the arts with - surprise! - the rise of atheism and the human "forsaking God". His argument was that without God humanity loses the basis for an objective standard of beauty and reason as well as any higher purpose for art. Thus, the arts become a meaningless free-for-all.
I don't get "art" of the drawing kind. I mean a good painting is a good painting to me. Vango looks like my 8 years old's stuff. I do understand that That's just me. If there was every a spot where "personal meaning" over "how it works" has a place, its art.
I do appreciate other forms of 'art". It amazes me how they can carve stone and guitar licks.
Classical stuff ... forget about it. I sit with slack jaw amazement every time I hear it..
Wagner was my first love ever. His music is epic enough to have shaken me out of my ignorance regarding classical music supposedly being good only as a background for studying or at upscale restaurants. And the stories... I am a big Tolkien fan, and just at that time I had begun to become interested in the German language and culture. So I immediately fell in love with that whole Teutonic mythology of his - dragon-slaying heroes, the Ring of power out of the Rhine, etc...
Some time later I realized there were other musical works out there, just as epic (Bruckner, Mahler etc). And yet a while later I learned to appreciate classical music for its beauty and perfection, regardless of its grand scale or "epicness".
I read a book once by an evangelical Francis Schaeffer, called "How Should We Then Live: The Rise and Decline of Western Thought and Culture" where he linked the modern decline of the arts with - surprise! - the rise of atheism and the human "forsaking God". His argument was that without God humanity loses the basis for an objective standard of beauty and reason as well as any higher purpose for art. Thus, the arts become a meaningless free-for-all.
"regarding classical music supposedly being good only as a background for studying or at upscale restaurants. " Like it.
My first love was English music Holst and Vaughan Williams, but that spurred me on to finding what other cultures could produce. Tolkien came to me in my teens, I read the trilogy SOLIDLY over a week end and have loved it ever since. The film was like the 2nd coming.
Schaeffer is of course talking 'No morality without God' cobblers. False correlation. There are a lot of factors, and the main one is that Pop is short for Popular. Rock is popular because it is popular. It is fun and easy to enjoy (1) Classical music is not easy, sounds old fashoned and you can't dance to it. I once watched with interest my best mate 'Dancing' at a party we gave, to pull some birds. Very practical and logical bod is my mate. He performed the very minimum of arm and leg movement to pass the 'Dancing' label so the girl of his choice was obliged to stay there gyrating while he made arrangements for later coition.
I may be wrong, but "Composed" music has nowhere to go. That bums on seats rather than wealthy merchants or the church paid composers rather released a flood of creativity. There were experiments in Jazz (Copeland's 3rd) and even Pop, best left in obscurity, but Atonal was the only way forward. Messiaen's Organ music and Turangalila is fine but really like Sibelius didn't lead anywhere. Atonality does, but where it leads, I don't care to go.
There is absolutely no reason why Atonal music can't be as religious as you could wish. But in the west we aren't religious very much (at a prom I heard an Apocalyptic new piece from a cantata on that subject. I liked it.). You can't blame the end of Composition on irreligion but Music not having a way to go,or not yet.
(1) but by god is it limited. Three guitars and drums, pretty much is the basis ALL the time. No wonder I found that compared to "The Planets" (around age 14) it had no depth. The seeds were sown there to come out a few years later.
When I heard this on a demo record when buying a stereogram
Some time later I realized there were other musical works out there, just as epic (Bruckner, Mahler etc). And yet a while later I learned to appreciate classical music for its beauty and perfection, regardless of its grand scale or "epicness".
Some would say "bombastic" rather than epic ... though I agree with your appraisal of these composers.
My former interest in pipe organ resulted in me witnessing several virtuoso organists play orchestral transcriptions of Wagner on the organ. To properly render Ride of the Valkyries on that instrument one must play the main theme on the pedal while keeping both hands busy with the accompaniment. It is always more than most people imagine is possible to do with one's feet and so is a real crowd pleaser (assuming the organist's feet are visible to the audience). The only thing I have seen cause more amazement is Bach's "***" Fugue done the same way, or Cameron Carpenter playing his own organ transcription of the Revolutionary Etude.
Some time later I realized there were other musical works out there, just as epic (Bruckner, Mahler etc). And yet a while later I learned to appreciate classical music for its beauty and perfection, regardless of its grand scale or "epicness".
Some would say "bombastic" rather than epic ... though I agree with your appraisal of these composers.
My former interest in pipe organ resulted in me witnessing several virtuoso organists play orchestral transcriptions of Wagner on the organ. To properly render Ride of the Valkyries on that instrument one must play the main theme on the pedal while keeping both hands busy with the accompaniment. It is always more than most people imagine is possible to do with one's feet and so is a real crowd pleaser (assuming the organist's feet are visible to the audience). The only thing I have seen cause more amazement is Bach's J-i-g* Fugue done the same way, or Cameron Carpenter playing his own organ transcription of the Revolutionary Etude.
* Why on earth is j i g considered a Naughty Word by the software here???
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I was about to say I like your lack of diffidence about telling me I'm talking nonsense. I gave Atonal 15 years of opportunity to Speak to me. Now I'm "out". I still do hear some, and I can follow the development of the material, but I do groan at the sight of an orchestra playing a New Work with a huge kitchen suppliers' department. 
