{"id":2575,"date":"2023-05-01T07:40:50","date_gmt":"2023-05-01T11:40:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/js1cd06kre.onrocket.site\/?p=2575"},"modified":"2023-05-01T07:40:50","modified_gmt":"2023-05-01T11:40:50","slug":"music-to-our-ears","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/2023\/05\/01\/music-to-our-ears\/","title":{"rendered":"Music to Our Ears"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

To listen to this reflection as a podcast,\u00a0<\/em>click here<\/a>.
\u00a0
It\u2019s not always easy to appreciate modern concert music.
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That\u2019s especially true when it comes to the radical creations of artists like the French composer Pierre Boulez (pronounced Boo-LEZZ<\/em>, 1925-2016) and the German musician Karlheinz Stockhausen (1928-2007), two of the most influential avant-garde composers during our lifetimes.\u00a0
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The irony is that contemporary musical artists have more tools, more advanced technologies, and greater freedom to experiment than any generation in history.\u00a0 But a number of today\u2019s composers are rolling out pieces that are almost impossible to comprehend, let alone enjoy.\u00a0
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That\u2019s apparent in numbers like Derive 2<\/em>, a chamber orchestra piece by Boulez.\u00a0
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In the video you\u2019re about to see, the aging composer himself is directing.\u00a0 As the musicians arrive onstage, members of the audience are excited.\u00a0 We join them in anticipating the opening notes.\u00a0 After a wait of almost 90 seconds, the music begins \u2013 and we can be forgiven for thinking we\u2019re listening to a middle school band warming up before their annual spring concert:\u00a0 Pierre Boulez. D\u00e9rive 2 directed by Boulez (48 m.) – YouTube<\/a>.
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This music is atonal.\u00a0 It doesn\u2019t follow classical harmonic patterns. That\u2019s another way of saying that if you hang in there for all 48 minutes you\u2019re not going to hear a tune you can sing in the shower tomorrow morning.\u00a0
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Avant-garde music occasionally appears in the soundtracks of science fiction or outer space movies.\u00a0 That\u2019s no accident.\u00a0 Boulez\u2019s compositions sound as if they\u2019re not of this world.
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Boulez himself was dismissive of his critics.\u00a0 As far as he was concerned, traditional \u201cconcert music\u201d was dead.\u00a0 His scores were intended to be savored by the musical elites who could appreciate his compositional genius.\u00a0 Each piece was created with extraordinary precision.\u00a0 Despite what our ears may tell us, not a single one of his notes is accidental or arbitrary.\u00a0 His works are essentially cerebral experiments intended for scholarly analysis.\u00a0
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Such pieces may be \u201cbrilliant.\u201d\u00a0 But they certainly aren\u2019t beautiful.
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At least Boulez understood he was never going to reach the masses.\u00a0 When asked why so few of his compositions are ever played in public, he said, \u201cWell, perhaps we did not take sufficiently into account how music is perceived by the listener.\u201d As American composer Robert Greenberg puts it, that\u2019s perhaps the understatement of all time.
\u00a0
Karlheinz Stockhausen fared somewhat better with the public.\u00a0 He even achieved a kind of rock star immortality when his face was chosen to appear on the cover of the Beatles\u2019 Sgt. Pepper\u2019s Lonely<\/em> Hearts Club Band<\/em> album.\u00a0 An enthusiastic fan of astrology, he was convinced he had been educated somewhere near Sirius, the brightest star in the summer sky \u2013 not your everyday autobiographical detail.
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Stockhausen was a pioneer of electronic music.\u00a0 His first compositions, the likes of which had never been heard before, were exciting.\u00a0
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Then they became \u2013 and here we are compelled to use the most dreaded word in the realm of art \u2013 boring<\/em>.\u00a0 Very few people listen to Stockhausen recordings these days in order to be inspired.\u00a0
\u00a0
He proved his chops as an avant-garde composer, however, by creating a series of \u201cperformance pieces\u201d that generated worldwide publicity.\u00a0 One of them is 1995\u2019s Helicopter String Quartet, <\/em>which requires four traditional musicians \u2013 two violinists, a violaist, and a cellist \u2013 to play their parts while flying in four different helicopters.\u00a0 The music is coordinated technologically.\u00a0 Here\u2019s a two-minute segment of the 30-minute piece:\u00a0 Karlheinz Stockhausen “Helicopter String Quartet” – YouTube<\/a>.
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It was a fascinating idea.\u00a0 But the music itself is almost impossible to comprehend \u2013 \u201cinflexible and horrid\u201d in the words of one commentator.\u00a0 The Helicopter String Quartet<\/em> suggests what it might be like to visit a beehive.\u00a0 Stockhausen believed he had discovered the compositional technique of \u201ccontrolled chance,\u201d a self-contradictory term that reveals the precarious nature of his convictions.\u00a0
\u00a0
By the end of the 20th<\/sup> century, more than few rank-and-file music lovers were asking, \u201cWhat happened?\u201d
\u00a0
Wasn\u2019t it possible for composers to create works that were more reminiscent of Mozart and the Killer B\u2019s (Bach, Beethoven, and Brahms)?\u00a0
\u00a0
Of course they could.\u00a0 But the world that had given birth to those legendary European artists was long gone.\u00a0 Spiritual certainty had eroded.\u00a0 Two world wars had destroyed hope and optimism.\u00a0 Darwinism had declared life to be a meaningless struggle.\u00a0 The Irish poet W.B. Yeats, writing in the 1920s, famously expressed an entire continent\u2019s despair: \u201cThings fall apart, the center cannot hold\u2026 The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity.\u201d\u00a0
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Great artists reflect the spirit of their times.\u00a0 The radical composers who came on the scene after nations began to stockpile nuclear weapons for the purpose of annihilating each other were responding to a world gone mad.\u00a0
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Human ears and hearts haven\u2019t changed, however.\u00a0 People are still drawn to harmony and beauty.\u00a0 And there is every reason to believe this will always be so.\u00a0
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Is this because we\u2019re all under the spell of a genetic quirk that makes us yearn to hear uplifting melodies, chords that resolve and, as Paul McCartney might put it, \u201csilly love songs\u201d?\u00a0
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Or is this compelling evidence that the spiritual foundations that so many have rejected are, in fact, aligned \u2013 by virtue of creation \u2013 with what it actually means to be human?
\u00a0
We worship a good and beautiful God who beckons us to come before him with music:
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Sing to the\u00a0Lord\u00a0a new song;<\/em>
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0sing to the\u00a0Lord, all the earth.
Sing to the\u00a0Lord, praise his name;
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0proclaim his salvation\u00a0day after day.
Declare his glory\u00a0among the nations,
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0his marvelous deeds\u00a0among all peoples.<\/em>
(Psalm 96:1-3)<\/strong>
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By God\u2019s grace, may your heart soar today with a song of joy.
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One that you can even sing in the shower.\u00a0 <\/em>\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

To listen to this reflection as a podcast,\u00a0click here.\u00a0It\u2019s not always easy to appreciate modern concert music.\u00a0That\u2019s especially true when it comes to the radical creations of artists like the French composer Pierre Boulez (pronounced Boo-LEZZ, 1925-2016) and the German musician Karlheinz Stockhausen (1928-2007), two of the most influential avant-garde composers during our lifetimes.\u00a0\u00a0The irony is that contemporary musical artists… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2576,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[413],"class_list":["post-2575","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-music-history"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2575","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2575"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2575\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2577,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2575\/revisions\/2577"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2576"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2575"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2575"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2575"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}