1. Didja accidentally blow through the whole, "We're using our real names" thing on registration? No problem, just send me (Mike) a Conversation message and I'll get you sorted, by which I mean hammered-into-obedient-line because I'm SO about having a lot of individuality-destroying, oppressive shit all over my forum.
    Dismiss Notice
  2. You're only as good as the harshest criticism you're willing to hear.
    Dismiss Notice

BBC proms commissions.

Discussion in 'The RedBanned Bar & Grill' started by Claude Ruelle, Jul 14, 2017.

  1. So, tonight was the first night of this year's BBC proms at the Royal Albert Hall in London. As always, they will feature a bunch of commissioned pieces by new up and coming contemporary composers.

    The composers are often introduced as prodigies who studied in the most prestigious schools, with the best teachers.

    Tonight's piece was very strange and had nothing that could connect with an audience. no pattern, no melody, no anchor. To tell you the truth, it sounded like the whole orchestra was having a seizure.

    I don't wanna sound like a douche bag and say that the music was shit! The composer definitely proved that he has chops, but his piece had none of the very important things Mike teaches us, and yet, everyone was like "What a magnificent composition!".

    I'd like to know your thoughts on that, because to me it seemed like a lot of jerking off and hypocrisy...
     
    Paul T McGraw likes this.
  2. That is called "having the connections to get in" with a combination of nobody wanting to voice their real opinion out of fear of seeming uneducated and "not getting it"
     
    Claude Ruelle likes this.
  3. Yep,

    I don't think the average listener is the target audience anyway. To tell the truth, I heard a bunch of sexy and hip stuff in that piece of music, despite the fact that everything sounded random.
     
  4. This is a excerpt of the piece I'm talking about :

     
  5. First thing was "What did that guy do to his Clarinet?". After the piece was through - I asked myself, did the audience clap because they are relieved that it is over? :D

    I must say, there are very interesting colors (textures rather), and some lines are interesting to hear. But yeah - No connection whatsoever. When hearing things like this, I really get what Mike sometimes rants about the academic music. Now I need 2 hours of ravel to get my ears accustomed to tonal music again ;-)
     
    Claude Ruelle likes this.
  6. Damn, the look on the faces of the players, the mannerisms of the conductor combined with the music really made me chuckle. Maybe the composer is really meta - the pattern there is that there is no pattern there.
     
  7. I don't decry "modern" or "contemporary" or "experimental" music; I call bullshit on hacks with no real musical craft. Schoenberg is the perfect counter-example, given how celebrated he is as a modern composer. That guy could write the fuck out of a melody and develop stunning tonal harmonies. He was in control; he made a choice about how to use his craft, that's all. If and when any of these guys can write a rock ballad, then I'll listen to this stupid cacophonous bullshit. If you can't write something simple and effective, you can't write anything complex and meaningful. 99% of this stuff is just people changing the rules so they can win a game they don't know how to play. That said, if they stumble across something useful, steal it. Then at least something productive may come out of it.
     
  8. Here, for those who are still trying to recover from that piece.

     
  9. "99% of this stuff is just people changing the rules so they can win a game they don't know how to play."

    Great line, Mike!
     
  10. In any genre you are going to have things that suck, and those that move you. I am not defending the piece, from the 2 minutes I heard
    I thought it was pretty lame.

    The only ** I would put by this is Film Composers have a long history of finding new material in avant grade music, and when applied to the moving image no longer seems "without form". I used to get mentored by Christopher Young, and half his scores are techniques found in the most avant grade music. But for horror, they worked like a charm. Kubrick really lead the way with this. Now we are all so used to these techniques and effects.

    I could post a whole list of famous pieces and composers who when they were alive people did not get their music.

    In my opinion, there is really great new "concert" music, and there is really shit new concert music. Just like anything else.
    You just gotta search for it.

    I find some of Philip Glass, and John Adams easily as difficult to listen to even though they are "tonal" and have a clear pattern.
    It must just be me. I think they are two of the most over-rated composers around.
     
    Kaan Güner likes this.
  11. Here is the story of how I personally discovered that modern concert music just might be kinda bullshit:

    When I was a university composition student, I was approached by a soprano friend looking for a contemporary piece to perform for an SAI (music fraternity) performance competition centered around 21st century works. I had the time, so I ended up writing this modal thing that avoided dominant-tonic chord progressions, but was otherwise fairly tame by contemporary concert music standards- strong tonal centers and a recognizable melody that developed and tied the thing together. Piano and voice- it had a pretty vibe I guess, but nothing special. It turned out the be the only piece actually commissioned specifically for the competition, and my friend ended up winning. The "prize" was a public performance at an SAI concert at a large local church. It was the first public performance of one of my works outside an academic setting, and I was actually really excited.

    The public performance at the church was a complete disaster. I think the accompanist was trying to sight-read her part without having rehearsed it. She quickly got lost in the introduction, causing the singer to sing the entire first section about a minor third above where she should have been. The singer eventually recovered and got back in key. The pianist did not. I actually believe the accompanist literally got a majority of the notes wrong- it was honestly that bad. Then it ended. And... got about the same applause as almost every other piece. At least until my friend decided to announce that the composer was in the audience and asked me to stand up. Which I did, mortified, to even bigger applause. I wasn't upset with the performers, I was just personally embarrassed to be publicly recognized by an audience who had just listened to that trainwreck and thought that's what I actually meant to write!

    The reception was equal parts awkward and surreal. I was just trying to find my friend to say goodbye, but all these elderly retired people from the audience kept approaching me to tell me what a lovely or fascinating piece I had written. What kind of made it worse is that they were all, as far as I could tell, just super-genuine about it. One couple excitedly told me that I was the first living composer they had ever met. They were all really sweet, and I looked them in the eye and shook their hands and tried to be very gracious. I mean, what else was I going to do, tell the sweet old lady that she was mistaken about it being any good and that's not what I meant at all?

    After what seemed like forever, my friend came out, and after working her way through the groups of well-wishers that tend to form around performers at those kinds of things, came over to me, apologetic. I made sure she understood that I wasn't upset with her, and then left as soon as I could. Thinking about it on the drive home, I started to wonder about the reaction. The sounds that came off that stage were just objectively awful. So, why had the reaction been so warm? Did it actually even matter what I had written, or meant to write? Or I was I just deeply mistaken about the reaction and everyone had just gone out of their way to blow smoke up my ass? Whatever the answer, I decided I wasn't comfortable working in a medium where I felt like I would always have those questions in the back of my mind.
     
  12. It had a Goldsmith original Planet of the Apes vibe on first listen.
    If anything it made me want to try and finish Mike's Horror Class as I tried to (with a plethora of Gin) and still failed to get through the pieces at the start of the class.
     

Share This Page