Sad but true

I don't think the original score had common time written on it, modern scores often simply put it in 4/4 and add measure lines.

go ahead and try putting it in 4/4, and wonder why the strong beats don't seem to line up on 1 and 3 on a consistent basis. The song floats wherever it wants. I don't think mensural notation actually had time signatures - simply units of length. I'm sure they probably wrote something closer to tempo markings - but I could be wrong. If I'm wrong, palastrina is simply the king of syncopation

 

Nope, no tempo markings. And there was no such thing as common time, because you couldn't fit any longas in it, let alone breves. But there was definitely a mensural indication on that piece: Imperfect, Imperfect. A C with a slash through it. groupings of 2 with 2 subdivision

Lining up on 1 and 3 don't make a time signature or a meter, of course. It's also why it's so much easier to read Palestrina (or Josquin) straight from the prints, because the silly bar lines don't get in the way.

Well, there's Dialogue of the Carmelites, Threnody for Victims of Hiroshima, Vanessa, Anthony and Clopatra or Summer Music for Winds, Durufle's Four Motets, Kontrapunkte, Walton's Second Symphony, Britten's Turn of the Screw or War Requiem, Takemitsu's Riverrun or November Steps, Corigliano's 1st, Tippett's 4th, Tower's Flute Concerto. And that's leaving out all the Stockhausen/Xenakis and Glass/Reich thread that I can't stand.

 

I know this is a really old thread, but it's interesting to consider these points. Doug makes good points, and I don't really have any worthwhile arguments to the contrary.

However, a few thoughts, in case anyone is still interested in this topic.
1) People, generally, don't gravitate to what is good for them -- what fulfills them, creates lasting memories and strong emotional connections, nourishes them and grows them, etc. This requires intent, consideration, and generally effort. People gravitate towards convenience. There are plenty of "interesting things" on our phones, but as studies continually demonstrate, they make us miserable, not happy. They ruin our ability to focus, and what we do focus on ends up being that which makes us addicted and depressed (i.e. social media drivel). They do a marvelous job of convincing us we're participating in something important and meaningful.

2) Listening to a recorded concert will never be anything like sitting in a concert hall and listening to real musicians. It's simply a different experience. Digital sounds better than vinyl, but vinyl is a different experience that demands your attention. I don't think most people "don't go to concerts" because it's expensive. Those people that never go to concerts most often don't listen to the music you experience in concert halls at home in any sort of high-fidelity manner either.

Technology has definitely hurt live music (something good replaced with something convenient), and I can't help but wonder if Doug is right. The closest thing we have to masterworks, in terms of popularity and prestige (not craft, necessarily), are film and game scores, and that's really the only new music being debuted in a way that attracts the layman.

We enjoy what we know, and if all we ever eat is McDonalds, we're probably not going to care to understand French cuisine, or even food that is good for us. Doubly so when this food is specifically manufactured to be addictive in order to increase sales. Ditto the garbage constantly floating by on the radio, and most of the pieces of tech invading our lives that provide a modicum of utility at the expense of our time and attention. There's a similar argument for why we'll probably never again see the kind of as-close-as-you-can-get-to-timeless monumental artworks being built like the great cathedrals.

 

willing to bet people go in large swaths to video game music concerts.

plenty of people still see live shows, just not as often an orchestra, because it's less relevant to what people listen to everyday.

me and the girlfriend spent 700$ to go see queen later this year, and we had to buy tickets nearly as soon as they went on sale because they'll sell that stadium out, no doubt.

probably because queen is more relevant to what people actually listen to than Mahler in 2019.



if you're blaming capitalism on the death of master pieces, then your suggestion? Go back to monarchy? Theocracy?

 

The Zelda Symphony sells out here pretty quickly. It's abundantly obvious that classical music isn't as popular as it once was, and while symphonies still seem to get a decent amount of attention, those that do get attention are exclusively older material.
I don't know why the beauty of an orchestra would be less relevant today. They're all over film and television. I'd wager, considering how little people deliberately listen to music and how frequently they watch films and or TV, that scores are probably some of the most common music they hear in a concentrated setting.

There's no suggestion here, just observation. Masterpieces sure were more common in the aforementioned times ;-).

 

there's a pretty large difference here actually

in video games: the primary sounds for any single player game, is the music. in multiplayer games, the music ends up being turned down(because people usually use voice chat)

however, in a film setting, the primary sound is the dialog(similiarly to the problem with multiplayer games - language demands attention)

at that point, the film music takes a back seat...

and similiarly, when people spend time listening music - their first thought isn't "the back ground noises from that show I saw on the life time channel".

most of the time on TV it's just filler non sense anyways... someone holding 3-4 note clusters on a string patch on their keyboard. Or it's generic library music for some pimp-my-ride/food network/house shopping thing.

 

I'm not sure what your point is. I'd agree for a lot of single player games -- dialogue tends to be more sparse than music, music is a large focus. Still a lot of bland music in single player games, but it's certainly more of a focus. I don't really count multiplayer games in this category because I haven't seen a single liver performance of a multiplayer-exclusive game score.

I think all you have to do is look at the film scores still being performed to realize film music, at least potentially, is as much or more the storyteller than dialogue is. Only in a lot of modern cinema does the score take a back seat. Unsurprisingly a lot of bigger budget films tend to need to exposit everything because they're not capable of showing the story (or having an interesting/coherent one) and telling it through the context of the film. The Lord of the Rings symphony is still touring and selling out 18 years later, as is Star Wars, etc. I still see newer recordings of film classics popping up.

TV is a different animal. Depends on the quality, as with film. Average daytime TV may as well be background noise, and in the case of the "epic" sound being used in cooking shows and the like, it's almost a parody. A handful of shows have more noteworthy music, but the nature of the programming makes it inherently less interesting than film and games, I'd argue.

In any case, aside from the classics, these are the surviving forms of orchestral music. My point is that it's no less relevant than before, because while new orchestral music doesn't seem to really garner any attention by the average layperson, people watch a lot more films than they used to, largely due to the popularity of platforms like Netflix.