The End of Common Practice

[elektro80]

[elektro80]

It must be said that Walter Benjamin was ideologically struggling with the art ideas from the 19th century and he was always trying to grasp it all and seemingly he was closing in on some sort of unified theory. He never got there.

[elektro80]

I should mention that I do not in any way subscribe to anything Adorno, Benjamin or Schelling. I am sailing my own ship.

[elektro80]

[elektro80]

try: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%27art_pour_l%27art

Here Poe is quoted

[elektro80]

But, after Schelling, Benjamin, Adorno and Poe, why not try reading this text again:
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The End of Common Practice

Initially, the effect of equal temperament on Western music was probably beneficial. Composers obtained the ability to modulate freely and to build complex chromatic harmonies that had been impossible under the meantone system. As a result, abstract instrumental music flourished as never before, yielding what is generally considered the "golden age" of Western music. Like a plant stimulated by chemical fertilizers and growth hormones, music based on equal temperament grew rapidly and luxuriously for a short period—then collapsed. If equal temperament played a prominent role in stimulating the growth of harmonic music in the common-practice era, it played an equally large part in its rapid demise as a vital compositional style. Twelve-tone equal temperament is a limited and closed system. Once you have modulated around the so-called circle of fifths, through its twelve major and twelve minor keys, and once you have stacked up every combination of tones that can reasonably be considered a chord, there is nowhere left to go in search of new resources.

This is essentially where Western composers found themselves at the beginning of the twentieth century. Everything that could be done with the equally tempered scale and the principles of tonal harmony had been tried, and the system was breaking down. This situation led many composers to the erroneous conclusion that consonance, tonality, and even pitch had been exhausted as organizing principles. What was really exhausted was merely the very limited resources of the tempered scale. By substituting twelve equally spaced tones for a vast universe of subtle intervallic relationships, the composers and theorists of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries effectively painted Western music into a corner from which it has not, as yet, extricated itself. Twentieth century composers have tried in vain to invent or discover new organizing principles as powerful as the common-practice tonal system. Instead, they have created a variety of essentially arbitrary systems, which, although they may seem reasonable in the minds of their creators, fail to take into account the capabilities and limitations of the human auditory system. These systems have resulted in music that the great majority of the population find incomprehensible and unlistenable.


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Doesn´t this sound strangely familiar?

[elektro80]

[elektro80]

[bachus]

[seraph]

uncommon practice:

http://podcast1024.libsyn.com/

[seraph]

[elektro80]

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[elektro80]

Something else.

Let me think. OK.


I remember having to endure a singer who was convinced that staying in tune was an unjust demand.

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[elektro80]

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[seraph]

[elektro80]

[mosc]

[kkissinger]

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[seraph]

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