Monday 11 April 2016


Why write ‘difficult’ music?
Any composer or musician who produces contemporary music will be familiar with negative responses.  The severity of the negative response can vary, sometimes it is an ideological debate other times it may be more physical, and both have the potential for long term consequences on the recipient. I recall witnessing a clash of opinions as a postgrad student, my supervisor had written a set of songs, the text based on intimate love letters.  The performance was open to university staff and students and a conference room was booked. The performance was good and polite applause seemed to signal the end of the evening.  Suddenly a member of the audience launched a tirade against the musical language used, I offered views that took the middle ground in the hope of calming the situation, the aggression continued for the best part of 30 minutes.
Was this aggressive reaction a response to a more complex manner of expression, or are other forces at work in such instances? Before attempting an answer the first task is to consider some aspects of simple and complex music. To simple music we may ascribe:

       ·         Clear melodic structures, often only one theme is used.
       ·         Clear contrasts, little in the way of transitions
       ·         Repetitive rhythms often based on dance patterns
       ·         Conventional orchestration and use of instruments
       ·         Familiarity of style, e.g. use of folk music, hymns, spirituals
       ·         Recollects or suggests comfortable environments, suggests group action or cooperation.
One example of simple music is Eric Coates “Calling All Workers”, I haven’t chosen this because it reminds me of my youth, it doesn’t! It is a wonderful example of music produced to motivate factory hands (it was composed in 1940 and played a significant part in the war effort) and contains the majority of the characteristics outlined above.
Calling All Workers may be heard at:
 Not all simple music is either effective or popular but when it is its appeal can be widespread. There are times when the music features some of the above characteristics and still manages to gain a wide audience. Arvo Pärt has music that speaks to specific religious groups, uses familiar elements both historical and technical but there is more to the structure than one might expect as this extract illustrates:
Pärt designed strict rules to control how the harmonic voices move with the melodic lines in his music, diktats which are as strict as serialism; ironically, given his rejection of his previous avant garde obsessions, the success of his new musical language is dependent on precisely the objectivity of thinking that serial composition demands. That austerity of process makes Pärt's tintinnabulation a new use of tonality, even a new kind of tonality, and it explains why his music sounds simultaneously ancient and modern… (Tom Service – The Guardian 18.06.2012).
For the sake of balance difficult music may feature some of the following:
·         Complex harmony and rhythm
      ·         Patterns of repetition are less obvious
      ·         Irregular phrasing
      ·         Unconventional tuning / scales
      ·         Unconventional approaches to text  
      ·         Dealing with serious issues such as mortality, psychological perception etc.
      ·         Reduction or distortion of human characteristics
The issue of patterns of repetition have been given psychological scrutiny, as the following extract shows:
"Much of what the brain does is to anticipate the future. Predicting what happens next has obvious survival value, and brains are remarkably adept at anticipating events.  We measured the predictability of tone sequences in music by Arnold Schoenberg and Anton Webern and found the successive pitches were less predictable than random tone sequences. For listeners, this means that, every time you try to predict what happens next, you fail. The result is an overwhelming feeling of confusion, and the constant failures to anticipate what will happen next means that there is no pleasure from accurate prediction." Professor David Huron
The section “less predictable than random tone sequences” is rather worrying and I suggest that his subjects were unfamiliar with atonal music, and that the randomly produced tone sequences were less than random.  However the general point is made about predictable events, and would make a case for the popularity of minimalism over other contemporary styles.
Mentioning minimalism brings us back to the musical arguments which take place between musicians who hold to different preferences! Group membership is a powerful motivating factor on our ego, and here is the most interesting factor the closer the groups are to each other the stronger the conflict that arises.
This statement by Dean Burnett makes the matter clear:
Our brain makes us hostile to those who threaten the group, even if it is a trivial matter.
(The Idiot Brain).
There is no need to refer to countless skirmishes between football supporters, we can turn to the followers of Wagner and Brahms:
Once Brahms was set up as Wagner's adversary, he drew vilification or adoration according to allegiance. Originally an ardent Wagnerite, the conductor Hans von Bulow did a complete volte-face, hailing Wagner's rival as “the greatest, the most exalted of composers”. To the master lieder-writer Hugo Wolf, however, Brahms was “only a relic from primeval ages”. Non-Germans were equally passionate. Tchaikovsky scorned Brahms as “a giftless bastard”, while Elgar declared that “the unvarying breadth and grandeur of his ideas marks him out as the true successor of Beethoven.”
(Extract from the Economist http://www.economist.com/node/367351)
It may be that we now have some idea as to why passions arise over different styles of music, and why certain types of music are more difficult to digest. We may write music to belong to a particular group and defend our position because of the choice we made. To return to Dean Burnett:
Humans don’t just want to be a part of a group, they want a high ranking role in it.
Does the choice of belonging to a smaller group increase our opportunity for becoming the leader or holding a high ranking position? Why else do we turn our backs on popularity, wealth and honours by choosing to write complex music when we have all the skills to write a simple song? After all I am no less good-looking than the members of One Direction, whose Midnight Memories has a present count of 112,459,865 views.
Perhaps my supervisor’s critic was only trying to be helpful.



8 comments:

  1. For us academics, there is always an underlying feeling that what is difficult is good and what is easy is juvenile. We cant help this feeling because this is how teaching proceeds. In your elementary arithmetic book, you learn to add and subtract, and you move on from that to your "intermediate" books and then onto your advanced books when you learn relativistic quantum electrodynamics. We cant get away from this underlying feeling, but with increasing maturity, we have to learn to control it. There is something of this in music. As an example of my own failure to recognise the underlying feeling, after I had written quite a lot of standard-practice music, I felt I had to move onto something more "advanced" and wrote a few (very few) schoenbergian pieces (not either on the net nor in my web site), but I feel now that on the whole my standard-practice pieces were much better music than my 12-tone ones. And on a larger scale this experience seems to be echoed in the academic music world as a whole. In the fifties we were all Schoenberg and Boulez, and for thirty years composers of new music did a very effective job at emptying concert halls. Their unfortunate legacy still holds good.

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  2. In musica, e forse anche in molti altri campi dell'attività umana, bisognerebbe fare distinzione tra difficile e complesso. Le ragioni per le quali un brano può essere ritenuto difficile, che è altra cosa da complesso. Per capirci farò esempi tratti dalla musica classica. La Sonata per pianoforte di Beethoven op. 109, per un pianista non è affatto difficile, ma concettualmente è di una complessità incredibile: infatti non è tra le sonate più amate del grande compositore. Le Variazioni su un valzer di Diabelli op. 120 per un pianista sono facilissime, per l'ascoltatore sono molto complesse. Al contrario, la Toccata e fuga in re minore di Bach è difficilissima per l'esecutore, mentre è facile per l'ascoltatore, infatti è conosciutissima e amatissima dal grande pubblico. Per me, i perché si scriva musica difficile (e anche complessa) sono dovuti soprattutto agli intenti espressivi del compositore, intendendo per espressivo anche la mancanza di espressione. Inoltre la difficoltà stessa, lo sforzo esecutivo e auditivo sono anch'essi espressivi. Molta musica di oggi sembra difficile perché è lontana dai modi di scrivere ai quali siamo abituati, in realtà questa musica è di una semplicità esecutiva e concettuale incredibile: molti brani di Donatoni, alcuni di Nono, ecc.

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    1. Thanks to you both, I have used Anthony's point in part to further the conversation on G+. Giorgio, I took some time to translate your comments, I hope I have the points clear as I wish to respond. The two faces of music, the technical and expressive are always in play. Your point about the demands on the performer is a consideration, he or she is also a listener, in fact we all interpret music whether the source is an instrument or recording. How deeply we understand is an issue, but not the concern of his blog. Your final point is the core concern of the blog, why does a composer accept remoteness as a price worth paying for writing in a particular style? I suggest that the answer concerns prestige and ego in demonstrating superiority and control of musical language. As I said we want more than to belong to a group, we want to have a high position in that group or lead it. Of course creating works that isolate through intellect comes at a price. We recognise the genius of Finnegan's Wake, but few of us laugh easily at its humour.
      I hope this reads well, writing on an iPad when you can only see part of what you have written is rather difficult, but I wanted to respond to your observations.
      Thanks again
      Ken

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    2. Ken says:"I suggest that the answer concerns prestige and ego in demonstrating superiority and control of musical language". This is a good idea but I cannot consider Mozart, Bach, Beethoven, Schoenberg or Stockhausen composed difficult musics for prestige, only. There must be more deep reasons. Today, for me as composer, writing music in my way is a need, I'm not able to compose in other styles. Better, if I write other musics, these aren't in my heart and in my deep mind. Yes, this comes at a price, but, what I can do?

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    3. Thanks you for your view. The presentation in this blog explores the psycological motivations behind our actions and if we are honest prestige and ego are words that can be applied to all the musicians you name. For Bach religion plays a significant part of his expressive intentions, he is criticised for writing music that is difficult for the player and the listener, but he may be excused as he believes music brings man and God closer together, and for this reason music must have a quality above the commonplace. I don't know if Bach considered that a folksong would in its own form be insufficient to bring man and God together. Can we assume that Bach is adopting the role of a priest? Beethoven seems to share this characteristic with his setting of the ninth symphony, and there is something of the priest in Stockhausen too. Whether you believe in God or not there is a stupendous self-belief in taking this role of intermediary.
      I could carry on finding reasons that account for motivating particular composers but I am convinced that many of the political, religious and social stances taken by artists are more easily understood in the terms I have outlined, however unpleasant it is to think of ourselves as less noble creatures.
      I haven't made many references to education. Do we write difficult music to educate? In part I think Beethoven considered this, it may be one of the more noble aspects of man.
      Writing these answers on a tablet is far from convenient, but I hope that there is some room for thought and an exchange of ideas here.
      You are certainly right that writing music comes at a price, fortunately the exchange can be rewarding, for me a social reward in communicating with others is all I seek, so I will continue to write and share even if the gifts are considered of little or no value.
      I hope Nurtan has time to contribute, I am sure he will find yet another way of viewing this, he has a way of looking in an alternative yet dispassionate way at such matters.

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  3. A bit more about that comment of mine a few days ago on your post on "difficult music". You re-posted my general comment about the mindset of academics, for which I am grateful, but now I've got something to say about my own feelings with regard to my own brief excursion into 12-tone writing. Contrary to what I said in my comment, I am putting up a 12-tone piano piece of mine on Soundcloud because when I played the file of it, there were things in it which I liked and I think that in places I didnt do a bad job of writing in an unsympathic mode. It is a closely argued piece and the only novel thing about it is the pitch organisation. I have also put up on Soundcloud two other short pieces under the name of "Two Cogent Comments on the Corn-Hog Ratio" (Nurtan: Any Midwesterner will know all about that). The title is nonsense, and so is the music. It is written with a random set of notes, and the idea is to see if a regular classical music listener well versed in the three B's can tell that of the two posts on Soundcloud, one is trying to produce music, while the other is just a joke.

    I know this game has been used in the scientific field. At a prestigious scientific conference, one of the papers sounding very scientific was presented by an actor, and the content of the paper was pure nonsense. The tale goes that it was very well received by the audience. Hans Andersen and the Emperor's new clothes come to mind.

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  4. After thinking about this and its companion piece and after many unsuccessful starts on a few points that were puzzling. I came to a startling - at least for me - conclusion that I don't have a consistent definition for ''difficult music''. Hammerklavier was unplayable as interpreted by modern pianists - for example Brendel - on 1820 pianos. Prelude and Fugue in C major by Bach BWV 545. sounds very different with a semi tone sharp or flat tuning, as it was in Bach's days, If you know this piece well, would listening to it with different tuning be difficult? Ken and I listened to Havergal Brian's The Gothic more than once or twice. This wonderful monstrous work was difficult for me on the first go, but it was enchanting as well. Now it is both easy and enchanting - is familiarity the key? I am very familiar with 1812 overture - I never liked it and never will - it is difficult for me to listen to it - why? Some music I listen to is very easy to follow (actually so mind-numbing that it becomes difficult) but difficult to listen for more than a minute or two,

    These finally gave me an answer probably true only for me and a few others who think like me: We write music that comes from a sound world within for some people that might be difficult in many ways, and we listen to music which addresses the sound world within with ease and find other music difficult. That brings me to Anthony' corn/hog joke: one can take it as a serious John Cage kind of commentary on the random nature of commodity market (difficult in several levels) or a good musical humour designed as a poke at the endless quotations of commodity prices easy, So it becomes a simpler proposition: Difficulty is in the eye of the beholder... With that Ken's reasoning, Tony and Giorgio's commentaries become clearer to me. Having said that I am still lost in many questions raised by this conversation, Except I reached at a point that I can make a personal statement : I write music that is easy for me but might be difficult for others and I listen to music some of which is difficult for me which was obviously not so for its creator.

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  5. The 1812 raises an issue of its own. Like you I am not over keen on it, but the work as a whole made far more sense to me when it was performed with a choir, a patriotic hymn seems to raise it up, as well as (I assume) for Russian speakers making greater sense. Of course they may also be familiar with the references and associations in the music. This sort of issue happens with the Beethoven op. 110. This is complex music that some may find difficult, I have lived with it for such a long time I can't remember my first responses. It is sometimes difficult sometimes playful, the second movement (I say movement though it is like one continuous movement in my mind) is apparently based on folk material. It makes sense that it is, but it doesn't diminish my enjoyment not knowing it source or jokes arising from the text. The music may be appreciated in a different way by a German living at Beethoven's time, but is it any less difficult to appreciate?
    there are some works that are consistently difficult, the Bridge sonata for piano must satisfy all the criteria I put in the blog about difficulties. I make some effort to write about this in the last blog on the subject, which ironically aims to put forward the positive aspects of motivation. While I recognise that it is difficult it is also rewarding (for me), this is not true for all music. Now the term reward brings about certain problems with it as it brings us back to satisfying basic psychological needs. Is there a way out of this cyclic problem?

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