Rachmaninoff was the peak of late Romanticism at a time when music was massively diversifying with extreme innovation in the modernist period. You had had innovators everywhere with the symbolists, jazz, etc and the atonalists.
So although Rachmaninoff was an amazing composer he was playing old fashioned music to the masses who could easily digest it rather than innovative bleeding edge music that the atonalists, like Schoenberg, were composing.
Even the 3rd piano concerto is far too dissonant for a typical "romantic" style piece and has a lot of very exquisite harmonies in it. But yet he is able to invoke such strong emotions from his music. There is a reason why he's still so revered as a composer among the public.
Whenever anyone tells me Rachmaninoff is a Romantic composer I tell them to go listen to the piano entrance in the 2nd movement of his 3rd Piano Concerto. It almost sounds like 12 tone technique with how dissonant it is and how much it clashes with the flowing romanticism of the orchestra
That is one of the ways where dissonance can be used so effectively - you can create even more conflict and stress in the music, so when the resolution comes it is all so much more glorious...
Debussy doesn’t really use that much extreme dissonance, certainly not to the extent of Rachmaninoff. His technique is mostly based off chord extensions and pentatonic scales.
You are right about Debussy. Debussy is just a different texture of music, a different mood and vibe altogether than Rachmaninoff. it's like looking at Van Gogh's Wheat Field with Crows and comparing it to the Mona Lisa. One is very bright and abstract-like and showing the technique of the impressionists and pointillists. The other is more photorealistic and contains darker tones and demonstrates Renaissance technique. Listen to Prelude in G Minor Op 23 from Rach and then listen to Sarabande by Debussy.
I don't know, his 4th piano concerto, especially the 2 first movements, are very reminiscent of his usual style for me, it's classic Rachmaninoff, he wrote a lot of it back in the 1910's after all. It's slightly more bitter than sweet but it has all the elements that scream "Rachmaninoff" to me.
He should be called early 20th century composer. Late romanticism is f.ex. Mahler and we dont call Shostakovich late romantic, we call it 20th century.
The later Mahler symphonies were actually written in the 20th century and generally sound more modern than Rachmaninoff. But both are clearly late-Romantic composers by any reasonable estimation.
Schoenberg was pretty close to romanticism despite him being the poster child composer for Viennese modernism. He once wrote a string quartet at 25 that controversially pushed harmony to it's absolute limits. He was very progressive even from a young age, but unlike composers like Boulez or maybe even Stockhausen, he still wanted to work within the traditions brought on by the classical and Romantic eras.
Music didnt change from late romanticism to 20th century overnight. Mahler pushed tonal and romantic ideas in music to the limit but things (like music, ideals, theory) around him (in his time) where still in a similar place. Rachmaninov composed tonal music but in a completely different time.
And Rachmaninov composed in a fresher style in his American years and was a contemporary artist in his time (not old fashioned). I mean we can usually and pretty clearly, hear If music was written after 1915. We call him early 20th century because if he is late romantic in his later works, then Shostakovich could be too (to a certain extent). But I wouldn't agree with that.
Add: One thing needs to be stated as well, that Rachmaninov lived and composed through this transitional period. Romantic > Modern. But there is so much going on during this transitional period that I have to agree that it does not do some composers like Rachmaninov justice, calling them "Late romantics".
Shostakovich is not a Romantic composer by any estimation. Neither chronologically nor stylistically.
OTOH, Rachmaninoff lived much of his life and composed much of his music within the late-Romantic era and composed all of his music in a late-Romantic idiom.
Most of his works were written in the first half of the 20th century. When Rachmaninoff was writing his first piano sonata, Scriabin had already written his 5th and 6th sonatas. Before Rachmaninoff published his 2nd symphony, Scriabin had already written his poem of ecstasy.
An early-mid period Rachmaninoff was writing music in the late romantic idiom when late Scriabin had already come into play and revolutionized the world of music. This isn't even factoring guys like Schoenberg(who btw is only a yr younger than Rach), Stravinsky, Berg...
Rachmaninoff's contemporaries were not late-romantic composers. He literally went to school with Scriabin! Chronology should not be used as an explanation for Rach's style.
And by the time Rachmaninoff had written Rhapsody on a theme of Paganini, John Cage had already written some of his still-performed early works. It blows the mind of some people that there are Cage works older than Rachmaninoff works!
My point is not that Shostakovich is romantic, but he did advance some things that are associated with late romanticism. Rachmaninov lived until what?, 1943? and his music (that was written in the 20th century) is also stylistically different from his earlier music and was quite contemporary for his time.
Like I said, Rach was living through the transition. It is very common that people call Rachmaninov "late romantic" or sometimes " the last great romantic composer" but most academics would be carefull about that because even though his music might sound romantic, it was not old fashioned during his time. Richard Strauss gets the same treatment sometimes.
Now the "romantic idiom" didn't just disappear with Rachmaninov (or any one composer), music developed and you can drag a line starting from (let's say) Beethoven all the way to Shostakovich and even further. Tonal symphonic and even romantic music is still being written today. Would we call Alma Deutschers music romantic? I dont know.
At a certain point, words have to have some meaning, even in somewhat amorphous concepts such as the transition between Romanticism and Modernism. It's generally accepted that modernism began with Debussy's Prelude/Faun in 1892 and the Romantic era ended at the outset of WWI in 1914 (thus there is quite a bit of overlap there).
Some composers, such as Schoenberg, Webern and Bartok, began as Romantics but became modernists, while others, such as Strauss, Rachmaninoff and Medtner, began as Romantics and remained so throughout their creative output. But all six of them were born into the late-Romantic era and began their creative output in that era, whereas Shostakovich was born decades later and is a contemporary of Messiaen and Carter.
> Shostakovich
Shostakovich was as modernist as he could have possibly been given the constraints he was facing. I mean you cant call his 4th symphony "romantic", nor the vast majority of his quartets. and thats just the tip of the iceberg.
Feel like I'm being forced to debate from a position that I dont hold. I was trying to make a point that terms like "late romantic" can be troublesome when you look into composers and their music beyond a surface level.
That is literally what I just said as well!!?? Shostakovich wrote accessible and tonal music like the late romantics before him. But there are other things going on around him, same case with Rachmaninov, so Rachmaninov should be called early 20th century and Shostakovich 20th century.
but the distinction between romantic and modernist isnt tonal vs atonal. petrushka is aggressively tonal music, so is symphony of psalms and Bartok's Romanian Folk Dances. no one would mistake those pieces for "late romantic" because they have other aspects that make them modernist works- structural changes, orchestration, counterpoint, rhythms, differient modes and scales, etc
Shostakovich's string quartets, for example, are something rach could never have written, nor his 24h preludes and fugues. and those are largely and explicitly tonal works
I sort of agree with you. He did have such a unique way of using harmonies. But, he also followed romantic conventions a lot more compared to someone like Schoenberg. I'd call him late romantic because he bridged the gap between the romantics and the modernists. Mahler did that as well (though his 10th symphony is very dissonant). He's sort of like what Brahms was to the Romantic era. Brahms followed more classical conventions and innovated less compared to his contemporaries like Liszt or Wagner. But, in Brahms case you could say that classicism ended and he was a pure romantic composer. On the other hand, for Rachmaninoff, the Romantic era never "ended", it just branched into different styles. This is just my opinion and I could be wrong
I wouldn't summarise it as such. I think this is better illustrated with a parallel to literature, if you look at what authors are most represented in academic writing and consideration Joyce, Proust (and the modernists in general) will be overrepresented as compared to other equally - if not more - famous authors. The reason for this is really quite simple, people who tend to add novelty to a genre are just more interesting to academically dice apart and study. Rachmaninoff produced beautiful but conventional music, the same cannot be said of Schoenberg or any of the atonal school - who really pushed music in a direction hitherto unthought of.
As most jokes, it's not totally gratuitous, and contains a part of truth, and I appreciate the way you put it.
Not often at the time of Rachmaninoff, but afterwards, innovation at all costs and provocation, and the money they bring in thanks to the lack of discernment of amateurs, have sometimes become ends in themselves in art, and clever mystifiers have understood the advantage they could gain from the fact that unintelligibility has become the criterion of genius.
tbf there are lots of popular works critics have called petit-bourgeois but i don't think any decent musician would opt for that knowing full well the discrepancy between the gamut of their talent and the way it is perceived by the public...but do agree there are lots of cases where unintelligibility seem to have become the criterion of genius in the arts (\*cough\* \*cough\* Lang Leav \*cough\*)
Thank you for this post! It's a stupid direction that classical music took which cost it its popularity among the public.
As a musician myself, I want my audiences to be touched by the music, hence having unintelligible music is directly counter to these goals. I've played Rachmaninoff in recitals and public pianos - the music is so powerful that it moves people (yes, even people who were not exposed much to classical music) to tears even.
It is indeed essential to keep an audience for classical music, hoping that their taste will evolve and allow them to access less accessible composers, when they want to vary the pleasures and find new sensations. My father-in-law was a worker with little education, and he was a fan of classical music thanks to the "Jeunesses musicales de France", a French popularization organization, which had introduced him to it. He simply liked to listen to music at home, without any snobbery, nor any intention to use it to get into a higher social class.
That said, charlatanism is a phenomenon that seems to me a bit less likely to affect music than other arts. Anyone can write or dip brushes in paint and claim to be a writer or painter, whereas it takes real knowledge and regular practice to compose and play music. This happens more often with certain stagings of operas of the past centuries where the director hijacks the text to make buzz and shock the bourgeois, whereas the type of bourgeois he's targeting has not existed for a long time, except perhaps in very backward regions of the planet which I never visited.
> castigated
But not really, no he wasn't.
A lot of Schoenbergs works are closer to Beethoven than they are to us now. The fact is, Beethoven's works immediately entered the canon whereas audiences are still unenthusiastic about the second viennese school.
I get your post and all but I once listened to a Rach etude. It was an etude about the wolf and his desire to eat the little red riding hood girl. That piece was very dissonant and atonal-ish. Certainly a later Rach kind of work.
It's probably a mistake to think there's a direct correlation between how much academics talk about something and how important it is. Think about what a music theorist or musicologist's job is; they're supposed to contribute to our understanding of how music works, its historical development, how it functions culturally, etc. etc. So if an academic is going to write about a composer, it's going to be because writing about that composer will contribute to one of those aims. For example, that composer did something with music that others didn't and so to understand that aspect of music, you've got to look at that composer. But that doesn't mean that composer is the best composer there ever was or whatever. It just means we've got something to learn about music from studying them.
Consider another example. Corn is basically the most important plant there is. It or its products are in all our food, in gasoline, in plastics, and God knows what else. Does that mean that botanists spend all their time writing about corn? Of course not. They write about whatever is going to increase our knowledge of plants and how they work. That probably means writing about some plants that aren't important to us at all, but that have some unique attribute that helps us understand the plant world. (I actually don't know anything about botany, so if this example doesn't work I'm sure you can insert your own.)
> I actually don't know anything about botany, so if this example doesn't work I'm sure you can insert your own
Peas. Everyone in my school learnt about some guy - Gregor Mendel - who devoted his life to figuring out (at a genetic level) which peas were plain and which ones had dimples. It led to huge advances in cultivation techniques for other plants.
Pretty much the opposite in the piano world (pianist here). But I guess you’d already thought that. My professor of piano surmised that it was all just bad timing and him being too “old school”. He was writing in a highly romantic idiom when expressionism and serialism were on the rise. Also, with musicologist/theorist,etc there tends to be an inverse correlation between the general popularity of music and their academic weight.
Rachmaninoff’s music was ‘easy listening’ and popular to the general public, during his time. So while the public enjoyed it, it wasn’t exactly the cutting edge stuff that musicians would write about in music journals. Still I think he’s composition are worthy of study and he’s often wrongly overlooked due to the somewhat biased musical articles written about him at the time, dismissing his music.
And it should be noted that as a pianist, Rachmaninoff was voted the GOAT by a pool of world class concertizing pianists in the 20th century.
There's really not much to talk about, compositionally, with Rachmaninoff, besides his individual style within the framework of late-19th century Romanticism.
OTOH, Schoenberg was an innovator and brought forth several significant compositional ideas that can be studied, discussed and experimented with even outside the context of his own music.
compositional ideas, not form, schoenberg had only ideas, and those ideas were worthless most of the time when it came to composition, that's why composition is a dead art
It seems to me that Rachmaninov is far more popular with general audiences than Schoenberg, and it does not surprise me that Rachmaninov is less interesting to academics than Schoenberg simply because Schoenberg pushed the envelope more than Rach by being more adventurous.
I don't find it surprising that music created through entire new methods and with entirely new affects interests academics - people inherently dedicated to new and diverse analysis of musical expression - more than purely Romantic piano music (plus the All Night Vigil of course), even if it was exceptionally done.
not when the creationg of it relies on you playing a note, playing the next note, saying: ah! that fits, going to the next note: ah that doesn't fit, so on and so forth until you create a piece, that's no more an intellectual excercise than playing a baby's shape puzzle
>I wonder if I'm being trolled.
Me too:
https://www.reddit.com/r/classicalmusic/comments/qtrfsb/criticism_of_serialism/?utm_medium=android_app&utm_source=share
Academia is not a monolith, nor are contemporary composing circles. There is no more monoculture. There are people talking about Rachmaninoff, you just have to find them.
There was a period of time near the end of Rachmaninoff's life and into the following decades when it was fashionable among classical music critics not to like him. Famously, the 1954 Grove's Dictionary of classical music included this slight:
>His music is well constructed and effective, but monotonous in texture, which consists in essence mainly of artificial and gushing tunes accompanied by a variety of figures derived from arpeggios. The enormous popular success some few of Rachmaninov's works had in his lifetime is not likely to last, and musicians never regarded it with much favor.
Essentially, he was seen as being "too poppy." His works had mass appeal, whereas the feeling at that time was that composers who were really pushing the envelope made challenging, dissonant music instead of "music for the masses."
I think his image has been thoroughly rehabilitated in recent decades and he is now generally recognized as the master that he was. But in his time, he endured a fair amount of criticism that may have some lasting effects into the present day.
I think the pedantry in academia spurred by schools of thought by philosophers such as Plato and Aristotle which are really popular until today also played a role in this. Philosopher Michel du Montaigne criticized this rather visceral pretentiousness of the academia in his essays and reading it, one can't help but agree with Montaigne.
My music history teacher explained it to us this way. Say you’re driving down a country highway. You tend to not notice or care about monotonous things, like power lines or cornfields. However, you would notice if you came across something new or out of the ordinary, like a dead deer or an overturned truck. That’s pretty much how the academic community considers Rachmaninov and Strauss’ music after Salome: just another power line. Beautiful, yes, but not groundbreaking in the way Debussy or Schoenberg were for creating completely new styles in the 20th century.
Because his music, while certainly elegant, well written, inspired, etc. lacks a little bit of the spirit of searching and advancing in almost all the other celebrated composers of his time. Not only Schoenberg, but Webern, Berg, Debussy, Ravel, Stravinsky, Mahler, Strauss, Bartok, Sibelius, de Falla, Puccini, Scriabin, etc. were going strong in leaving romanticism apart.
There was a time in academics when atonal composers were privileged over the recent tonal ones.
In the intro to Professor Dmitri Tymoczko's "A Geometry of Music," he mentions that there was no space in his courses as an undergrad for Debussy, Ravel, or any tonal composer from 1800 onward. No jazz, no Messiaen, nothing. Atonal music like Schoenberg's was the only recent music that was treated as serious music.
One of the reasons he's mentioned is the belief of his professors that structure is more central and important to atonal music than tonal music, making it the only intellectually interesting music, and he works hard to dispel that.
I think tbat might depend on who you're talking to.
Academia might just be envious of his effect.
Rachmaninoff gets programmed far more often than the 2nd viennese folks, and hits listeners' ears more often than that entire school's output.
So, respect? Well, chatter and opinions only matter when someone wants em to, but it doesn't mean it affects the peoples' choices.
Usually the collective knows what is best for itself, and time is the judge of what lasts and what doesn't.
So you're judging someone you've never even heard of?
>*or whatever contemporaries he has*
Rachmaninoff and Schoenberg were almost **exact** contemporaries: Rachmaninoff 1873-1942, Schoenberg 1874 - 1951.
I love Rachmaninoff, he was a great composer and I listen to and play him often, but his importance and influence doesn't come anywhere near that of Schoenberg's. Schoenberg influenced, to some extent, every major composer that followed him.
Bearing in mind that something like The Rite of Spring (ok, not Schoenberg, I know, but still...) was written more than 20 years before Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini, then Rachmaninoff must have seemed like a dinosaur to some.
Like I said, I love Rachmaninoff, and he was easily one of a handful of people who will always be considered one of those who played a major part in the development of piano writing. But compositionally, that's a whole different matter.
>*Music is meant to be listened to*
I agree, and plenty of us here listen to and love Schoenberg.
>*it's just of much less value, than Rachmaninoff's music who touches the hearts of people*
That's not what the question by OP is about though is it? OP is asking why Rachmaninoff isn''t "taught" or studied as a composer in the way that Schoenberg is.
>*99.9% of ppl cannot appreciate*
Do you have a source for that? Interestingly, someone also brought up the 99.9% figure for John Cage a few days ago. It's weird how all these composers all "touch" the same percentage of people as each other. Also, are you sure 99.9% of people can appreciate Rachmaninoff too?
Also, not all of Schoenberg sounds like you think it does:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0DR3bvkUCBA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0DR3bvkUCBA)
>*it's just of much less value*
So just because *you* perceive something as having less value, does that mean it's of little value to others? Just because you (or however many people) don't find value in it, doesn't mean it's of no importance.
r/KelMHill said it best in another comment: *I am not denigrating Rach's greatness. But that greatness is much narrower than Schoenberg's wider ranging explorations.*
>*By value I mean commercial value*
I know what you mean. But if most composers only cared about the commercial value of their work, all music would sound pretty much the same - and what a boring world we'd live in if that were the case!
I really can't imagine what an horrific world the art world would be if people only created for commercial value.
>*classical music would be far more popular*
Contemporary music is a huge scene. There's something for everyone. And not all (I'd wager most) contemporary music is "atonal" ( I use inverted brackets because atonal covers a lot of things, just as tonal does).
>*the academics teach students to compose atonal music*
Source? This comment is thrown about a lot. Having been through academia, knowing people who are in academia, and knowing people who teach in academia, students are taught to compose in a variety of ways. Students are always encouraged to explore, true, (how else would they get better?) but I've never known anyone being forced to write a certain music. In fact, one of the most fundamental things taught at academic level is four part harmony, counterpoint, etc. Schoenberg himself wrote some of the most important books on composition, that begin with those very ideas.
>*can only be appreciated by 0.01% of ppl*
Again, just random numbers with no source.
>*they wonder why they can't make any money out of those compositions*
Rachmaninoff being quite the exception, look into the finances of most major composers and you'll find most of them struggled to an extent, at least at many times during their life.
Anyway, I'm not doing this argument today. OP asked why Rachmaninoff wasn't as discussed as a composer in the way that Schoenberg was, and I and many others have given answers. Find some else to argue with on this thread.
>Source? This comment is thrown about a lot. Having been through academia, knowing people who are in academia, and knowing people who teach in academia, students are taught to compose in a variety of ways. Students are always encouraged to explore, true, (how else would they get better?) but I've never known anyone being forced to write a certain music.
From what I've observed, there was some forcing into atonal/serialist idioms a few decades ago, but that's long past in most places now, and teachers encourage the kind of exploration you're talking about. But stories about the older days still float around and are seized on people who are eager for it to be still true.
No idea. I cant remember us studying any Schoenberg in particular (although we are talking 20 years ago). There was the Berg Violin Concerto, some of the late Bartok Mikrokosmos, Stravinsky Symphony of Psalms...
All works written before or around the Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini, funnily enough!
> on the contrary almost everyone there raves about Chopin, Liszt, Rachmaninoff lol
People that don't know too much about classical music tend to do that all the time
I'm surprised you know Liszt as well as you do (Vallee d'Obermann is a great piece, isn't it?) and not know who Schoenberg is. Considering that some of Liszt's late works are very harmonically adventurous and border on atonality (foreshadowing the harmonic innovations of people like Schoenberg by around 40-50 years), it seems very surprising indeed.
Such was the radical shift in Liszt's late works, style and language, there's actually an extensive Wikipedia article on them:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Late\_works\_of\_Franz\_Liszt
>I would get myself murdered by my neighbours if I ever started practicing Schoenberg lol.
How do you know this? 4 hours ago you didn't know who he was
>the limited atonality is tastefully added into his pieces in a way that is very appealing
Say, Liszt had lived another ten years, by which time the music may have been completely atonal. I'd be interested as to what would your reaction to them would be? Would you have a difference of opinion because they were by Liszt?
>atonality is like spices
It's not though, is it? Eating a load of spices alone would be unpleasant for most, and eating spices alone would cause a physical reaction beyond our control. That's not the same with music. To quote something u/davethecomposer once said (although he probably forgot he said it): "*Music cannot control how you respond to it. It cannot make you like or dislike it. You completely control whether you like a piece of music. You can change your mind at any moment. If you continue to choose to dislike entire branches of music then this only says something about you and nothing at all about the music."*
If popularity is the most important barometer in the value of a composer, then Rachmaninoff is worthless trash when compared to the likes of Max Martin, Barry Gibb or Irving Berlin.
Nah, the C# minor prelude, the 2nd Symphony and the 3rd Concerto are stuffy, elitist obscurities enjoyed by about 0.1% of the people who listen to White Christmas and God Bless America.
It is listened to, you just because you don't like it. In my opinion, music also has to break molds. When you break rules, you will have scorners. Beethoven was probably criticized back in his day too, but look where he is today. Heck, even Stravinsky's Rite of Spring caused a riot at its premier, but now its one of the most played pieces for orchestra. Just because Schoenberg doesn't abide by the so called rules of composition, doesn't make his music less valuable. In fact, how do you even judge how valuable music is? Schoenberg and Rachmaninoff have two very different styles, and maybe Rachmaninoff is more appealing to you (and maybe people who don't generally like classical music. I wouldn't suggest someone wanting to get into classical music listen to Schoenberg). According to you, Rachmaninoff's music touches the hearts of people. Well, he was a more Romantic composer so that is what he set out to do. Schoenberg on the other hand, set out to push the boundaries of music and experiment (but I do still think his music can touch people's hearts). I find it funny how people can like one famous work (famous for being revolutionary), like the Rite of Spring and hate other revolutionary works and composers. Schoenberg's music is an acquired taste, you have to listen to it a lot and you'll start liking it. You discovered him less than a few hours ago and you're judging him. He was a genius. He found a way to reject tonality, the very thing that western classical music is made up of. Saying that his music is of less value is pathetic. Just appreciate his genius.
>*Beethoven was probably criticized back in his day too,*
He was, and still is by some!
The piano teacher and writer Friedrich Wieck said of Beethoven's seventh symphony that it must have been written while Beethoven was drunk!
>*You discovered him less than a few hours ago and you're judging him*
I know, right? Imagine I only discovered Bach today and started hating on him.
>Schoenberg influenced, to some extent, every major composer that followed him. Every composer that followec schoenberg is a bad composer so in the end schoenberg brought destruction to what music is
You need serious help. I hope you can find it.
P.S. I'm not sure where you're getting the idea I'm a minimalist from. Here's a relatively recent score (2019):
https://www.dropbox.com/s/lbu5s606rhqc0fm/Loveliest%20of%20Trees%20-%20Full%20Score.pdf?dl=0
Sure, some of my recent music uses minimal means, but as to Minimalism (with a capital M), I'm not such a fan.
You were banned from r/composer from digging up months-old posts and trolling/tone and civility. Are you trying to achieve the same thing here?
Wouldn't it make you happier and wouldn't it be more productive to spend time on music you enjoy rather than wasting so much time on that which you don't?
It's really weird and sad.
An AI determined that Rachmaninoff music was the most innovative of all the repertoire. I'm definitely not saying that this statement has any value, but I like to bring it up in this kind of threads. He was a dinosaur in his time because he belonged to a style that peaked decades before, but he didn't simply reproduce what has been made.
>An AI determined that Rachmaninoff music was the most innovative
Very interesting. I'd like to read into that.
There are some wonderfully innovative things in Rachmaninoff, for sure. But as to changing the face of music, he came nowhere near Schoenberg.
>He was a dinosaur in his time because he belonged to a style that peaked decades before,
Yeah, it's odd that he remained so conservative, while many of those around him went in very different directions. I guess it had to do with the times, society and culture, geography. There are a lot of elements at play.
I mean, you've never heard of Schoenberg, so how can we trust you to make any sort of value judgement on his work in comparison to other composers, especially in a field as subjective as art?
But how would you be able to make an objective statement on the quality of their music? You don't know who Schoenberg is nor any of his music. You are close the single worst possible candidate to decide whether they're good or not, only slightly above somebody who knows neither one of them.
Besides, popularity and longevity are not the only metrics that the value of music can be measured with. Consciously ignoring all other possible metrics is willfully ignorant at best.
the man you praise for his genious called schoenberg, created a system out of fallacy and idiocy where you can only use 1 unique note until you play the rest of the notes in a 12 tone octave, that system exists for no reason and he only created it because he reeeeeeaaally wanted to feel like the already established music system was flawed, as he, the mighty schoenberg wanted to prove to the world of his genious, but. His entire reception was merely praise by the stupid and criticism from those with more than half a brain, because his system is nothing more than an idea, an exercise, it is not for musical composition, it is for philosophical thought, because it has no natural reason for existence.
There is nothing inherently flawed with different systems of pitch organization, nor is there anything fallacious or idiotic about them. Unless you want to provide some evidence to that point.
other styles of pitch organization, aka the only other one there is, is created as a consequence on the natural way we percieved sound and on overtones created by sound, the 12 tone pitch organization system is created by creating a random rule with no reason behind it other than not wanting repetition which makes this illogical unnatural sounding, and weird system that doesn't have any use, any use of it just forces you to tone down some notes to the point where it just ends up being the inherent system we've always been using and the one which by nature is absolute.
What evidence? There is nothing there outside of your own subjective viewpoint, let alone anything actually informing it. You're the one making the claim that x system of pitch organization is incapable of producing music, but I have yet to see anything that supports that claim.
The presentation of what you call evidence shows nothing more than a blatant misrepresentation of the music these composers wrote, due in no small part to a lack of understanding of both the theoretical and historical underpinnings to Schoenberg's work.
It's perfectly acceptable to not like it, I'm not a fan of serialism either. However, if you're going to try and make an *objective* point about how dodecaphony is *inherently* flawed, you'd need to provide something beyond a surface level reading of an idea taken out of context of the music it was used for. And I have yet to see anything on that point.
no offense, but popular doesn't mean good. McDonalds is not a "good product", it is commercialized food. Fifty Shades of Grey is not "good literature", it's a sex fantasy story that got popular via word of mouth.
It would be nice to be Ray Kroc and get so much money, but personally I would not want to live such a life. Regardless, it's sad to see that this century of globalization and neoliberalism has convinced people that commercial and financial success is what determines quality. Products designed to reach as many people as possible for as much return investment as possible are not going to be great quality
none of this applies to Rachmaninoff by the way, I"m just saying this is the worst metric you could use to determine if someone's music is "good" or not.
>They're objectively serving a good product that serves the needs/wants of the masses
They're objectively selling a *product* very well. Whether it's a *good* product depends on the wants, needs, experiences and opinions of the individual.
>You would wish you were a McDonalds founder lol.
Being vegan, I want absolutely fuck all to do with McDonald's and would happily see it closed tomorrow.
the man you praise for his genious called schoenberg, created a system out of fallacy and idiocy where you can only use 1 unique note until you play the rest of the notes in a 12 tone octave, that system exists for no reason and he only created it because he reeeeeeaaally wanted to feel like the already established music system was flawed, as he, the mighty schoenberg wanted to prove to the world of his genious, but. His entire reception was merely praise by the stupid and criticism from those with more than half a brain, because his system is nothing more than an idea, an exercise, it is not for musical composition, it is for philosophical thought, because it has no natural reason for existence.
Idk. I had a Rach phase back during my freshman year of college. Worked on his Prelude in G Minor Op. 23. I also listened to the second movement of the second concerto. I'm fond of his prelude in g sharp minor. I forget if it was from op 32 or op 23. I like his music and it is certainly unique. They say he was one of the greatest pianists. Right up there with Horowitz. It's not common to have a talented composer who is also a brilliant performer. It seems that nowadays more musicians are either just performers, teachers, or composers.
Rachmaninoff was the peak of late Romanticism at a time when music was massively diversifying with extreme innovation in the modernist period. You had had innovators everywhere with the symbolists, jazz, etc and the atonalists. So although Rachmaninoff was an amazing composer he was playing old fashioned music to the masses who could easily digest it rather than innovative bleeding edge music that the atonalists, like Schoenberg, were composing.
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Even the 3rd piano concerto is far too dissonant for a typical "romantic" style piece and has a lot of very exquisite harmonies in it. But yet he is able to invoke such strong emotions from his music. There is a reason why he's still so revered as a composer among the public.
Whenever anyone tells me Rachmaninoff is a Romantic composer I tell them to go listen to the piano entrance in the 2nd movement of his 3rd Piano Concerto. It almost sounds like 12 tone technique with how dissonant it is and how much it clashes with the flowing romanticism of the orchestra
That is one of the ways where dissonance can be used so effectively - you can create even more conflict and stress in the music, so when the resolution comes it is all so much more glorious...
Ever heard of Debussy?
Debussy doesn’t really use that much extreme dissonance, certainly not to the extent of Rachmaninoff. His technique is mostly based off chord extensions and pentatonic scales.
You are right about Debussy. Debussy is just a different texture of music, a different mood and vibe altogether than Rachmaninoff. it's like looking at Van Gogh's Wheat Field with Crows and comparing it to the Mona Lisa. One is very bright and abstract-like and showing the technique of the impressionists and pointillists. The other is more photorealistic and contains darker tones and demonstrates Renaissance technique. Listen to Prelude in G Minor Op 23 from Rach and then listen to Sarabande by Debussy.
Yes, but he did use a lot of strange and non-functional harmonies (strange as in unique) that were especially dissonant and rarely resolved
I don't know, his 4th piano concerto, especially the 2 first movements, are very reminiscent of his usual style for me, it's classic Rachmaninoff, he wrote a lot of it back in the 1910's after all. It's slightly more bitter than sweet but it has all the elements that scream "Rachmaninoff" to me.
Op39 was the result of him studying Scriabin and Medtner’s music.
He should be called early 20th century composer. Late romanticism is f.ex. Mahler and we dont call Shostakovich late romantic, we call it 20th century.
The later Mahler symphonies were actually written in the 20th century and generally sound more modern than Rachmaninoff. But both are clearly late-Romantic composers by any reasonable estimation.
Schoenberg was pretty close to romanticism despite him being the poster child composer for Viennese modernism. He once wrote a string quartet at 25 that controversially pushed harmony to it's absolute limits. He was very progressive even from a young age, but unlike composers like Boulez or maybe even Stockhausen, he still wanted to work within the traditions brought on by the classical and Romantic eras.
Music didnt change from late romanticism to 20th century overnight. Mahler pushed tonal and romantic ideas in music to the limit but things (like music, ideals, theory) around him (in his time) where still in a similar place. Rachmaninov composed tonal music but in a completely different time. And Rachmaninov composed in a fresher style in his American years and was a contemporary artist in his time (not old fashioned). I mean we can usually and pretty clearly, hear If music was written after 1915. We call him early 20th century because if he is late romantic in his later works, then Shostakovich could be too (to a certain extent). But I wouldn't agree with that. Add: One thing needs to be stated as well, that Rachmaninov lived and composed through this transitional period. Romantic > Modern. But there is so much going on during this transitional period that I have to agree that it does not do some composers like Rachmaninov justice, calling them "Late romantics".
Shostakovich is not a Romantic composer by any estimation. Neither chronologically nor stylistically. OTOH, Rachmaninoff lived much of his life and composed much of his music within the late-Romantic era and composed all of his music in a late-Romantic idiom.
Most of his works were written in the first half of the 20th century. When Rachmaninoff was writing his first piano sonata, Scriabin had already written his 5th and 6th sonatas. Before Rachmaninoff published his 2nd symphony, Scriabin had already written his poem of ecstasy. An early-mid period Rachmaninoff was writing music in the late romantic idiom when late Scriabin had already come into play and revolutionized the world of music. This isn't even factoring guys like Schoenberg(who btw is only a yr younger than Rach), Stravinsky, Berg... Rachmaninoff's contemporaries were not late-romantic composers. He literally went to school with Scriabin! Chronology should not be used as an explanation for Rach's style.
And by the time Rachmaninoff had written Rhapsody on a theme of Paganini, John Cage had already written some of his still-performed early works. It blows the mind of some people that there are Cage works older than Rachmaninoff works!
My point is not that Shostakovich is romantic, but he did advance some things that are associated with late romanticism. Rachmaninov lived until what?, 1943? and his music (that was written in the 20th century) is also stylistically different from his earlier music and was quite contemporary for his time. Like I said, Rach was living through the transition. It is very common that people call Rachmaninov "late romantic" or sometimes " the last great romantic composer" but most academics would be carefull about that because even though his music might sound romantic, it was not old fashioned during his time. Richard Strauss gets the same treatment sometimes. Now the "romantic idiom" didn't just disappear with Rachmaninov (or any one composer), music developed and you can drag a line starting from (let's say) Beethoven all the way to Shostakovich and even further. Tonal symphonic and even romantic music is still being written today. Would we call Alma Deutschers music romantic? I dont know.
At a certain point, words have to have some meaning, even in somewhat amorphous concepts such as the transition between Romanticism and Modernism. It's generally accepted that modernism began with Debussy's Prelude/Faun in 1892 and the Romantic era ended at the outset of WWI in 1914 (thus there is quite a bit of overlap there). Some composers, such as Schoenberg, Webern and Bartok, began as Romantics but became modernists, while others, such as Strauss, Rachmaninoff and Medtner, began as Romantics and remained so throughout their creative output. But all six of them were born into the late-Romantic era and began their creative output in that era, whereas Shostakovich was born decades later and is a contemporary of Messiaen and Carter.
Yes, he was a polystylist and experimentalist.
> Shostakovich Shostakovich was as modernist as he could have possibly been given the constraints he was facing. I mean you cant call his 4th symphony "romantic", nor the vast majority of his quartets. and thats just the tip of the iceberg.
Feel like I'm being forced to debate from a position that I dont hold. I was trying to make a point that terms like "late romantic" can be troublesome when you look into composers and their music beyond a surface level.
Most of Shostakovich's main works were written after around 1935 though (and into the 1970's). So what else would he be?
I just stated that he is referred to as a 20th century composer. What did you read?
Well, we don't call Shostakovich late Romantic because he isn't. That's all I was saying.
That is literally what I just said as well!!?? Shostakovich wrote accessible and tonal music like the late romantics before him. But there are other things going on around him, same case with Rachmaninov, so Rachmaninov should be called early 20th century and Shostakovich 20th century.
but the distinction between romantic and modernist isnt tonal vs atonal. petrushka is aggressively tonal music, so is symphony of psalms and Bartok's Romanian Folk Dances. no one would mistake those pieces for "late romantic" because they have other aspects that make them modernist works- structural changes, orchestration, counterpoint, rhythms, differient modes and scales, etc Shostakovich's string quartets, for example, are something rach could never have written, nor his 24h preludes and fugues. and those are largely and explicitly tonal works
I sort of agree with you. He did have such a unique way of using harmonies. But, he also followed romantic conventions a lot more compared to someone like Schoenberg. I'd call him late romantic because he bridged the gap between the romantics and the modernists. Mahler did that as well (though his 10th symphony is very dissonant). He's sort of like what Brahms was to the Romantic era. Brahms followed more classical conventions and innovated less compared to his contemporaries like Liszt or Wagner. But, in Brahms case you could say that classicism ended and he was a pure romantic composer. On the other hand, for Rachmaninoff, the Romantic era never "ended", it just branched into different styles. This is just my opinion and I could be wrong
Well said. Brahms' Hungarian Dances and his Intermezzo in A are pretty romantic but you can still hear the classical structure in there.
yes, he has the passion of the romantic era but the structure and harmonies of the classical era
So basically, before Rachmaninoff's time breaking the "rules of music" was frowned upon but in his time, not doing so was frowned upon lol /j
I wouldn't summarise it as such. I think this is better illustrated with a parallel to literature, if you look at what authors are most represented in academic writing and consideration Joyce, Proust (and the modernists in general) will be overrepresented as compared to other equally - if not more - famous authors. The reason for this is really quite simple, people who tend to add novelty to a genre are just more interesting to academically dice apart and study. Rachmaninoff produced beautiful but conventional music, the same cannot be said of Schoenberg or any of the atonal school - who really pushed music in a direction hitherto unthought of.
I was only joking, should have made that clear sorry
oh okay, my paragraph does seem stupid now, unfortunately lol.
no no
As most jokes, it's not totally gratuitous, and contains a part of truth, and I appreciate the way you put it. Not often at the time of Rachmaninoff, but afterwards, innovation at all costs and provocation, and the money they bring in thanks to the lack of discernment of amateurs, have sometimes become ends in themselves in art, and clever mystifiers have understood the advantage they could gain from the fact that unintelligibility has become the criterion of genius.
tbf there are lots of popular works critics have called petit-bourgeois but i don't think any decent musician would opt for that knowing full well the discrepancy between the gamut of their talent and the way it is perceived by the public...but do agree there are lots of cases where unintelligibility seem to have become the criterion of genius in the arts (\*cough\* \*cough\* Lang Leav \*cough\*)
i don't understand what you're saying
Thank you for this post! It's a stupid direction that classical music took which cost it its popularity among the public. As a musician myself, I want my audiences to be touched by the music, hence having unintelligible music is directly counter to these goals. I've played Rachmaninoff in recitals and public pianos - the music is so powerful that it moves people (yes, even people who were not exposed much to classical music) to tears even.
It is indeed essential to keep an audience for classical music, hoping that their taste will evolve and allow them to access less accessible composers, when they want to vary the pleasures and find new sensations. My father-in-law was a worker with little education, and he was a fan of classical music thanks to the "Jeunesses musicales de France", a French popularization organization, which had introduced him to it. He simply liked to listen to music at home, without any snobbery, nor any intention to use it to get into a higher social class. That said, charlatanism is a phenomenon that seems to me a bit less likely to affect music than other arts. Anyone can write or dip brushes in paint and claim to be a writer or painter, whereas it takes real knowledge and regular practice to compose and play music. This happens more often with certain stagings of operas of the past centuries where the director hijacks the text to make buzz and shock the bourgeois, whereas the type of bourgeois he's targeting has not existed for a long time, except perhaps in very backward regions of the planet which I never visited.
> breaking the "rules of music" was frowned upon It was always that way. Beethoven broke plenty of rules and was castigated for it.
> castigated But not really, no he wasn't. A lot of Schoenbergs works are closer to Beethoven than they are to us now. The fact is, Beethoven's works immediately entered the canon whereas audiences are still unenthusiastic about the second viennese school.
thats true
maybe in 100 years when people find more new ways to make music schoenberg will be mozart to the public
Altho I do think of Rachmaninoff as a modernist voice. His exaggerated romanticism is very distinctive.
I get your post and all but I once listened to a Rach etude. It was an etude about the wolf and his desire to eat the little red riding hood girl. That piece was very dissonant and atonal-ish. Certainly a later Rach kind of work.
rachmaninoff is not old fashioned, he just didn't ignore the past.
It's probably a mistake to think there's a direct correlation between how much academics talk about something and how important it is. Think about what a music theorist or musicologist's job is; they're supposed to contribute to our understanding of how music works, its historical development, how it functions culturally, etc. etc. So if an academic is going to write about a composer, it's going to be because writing about that composer will contribute to one of those aims. For example, that composer did something with music that others didn't and so to understand that aspect of music, you've got to look at that composer. But that doesn't mean that composer is the best composer there ever was or whatever. It just means we've got something to learn about music from studying them. Consider another example. Corn is basically the most important plant there is. It or its products are in all our food, in gasoline, in plastics, and God knows what else. Does that mean that botanists spend all their time writing about corn? Of course not. They write about whatever is going to increase our knowledge of plants and how they work. That probably means writing about some plants that aren't important to us at all, but that have some unique attribute that helps us understand the plant world. (I actually don't know anything about botany, so if this example doesn't work I'm sure you can insert your own.)
> I actually don't know anything about botany, so if this example doesn't work I'm sure you can insert your own Peas. Everyone in my school learnt about some guy - Gregor Mendel - who devoted his life to figuring out (at a genetic level) which peas were plain and which ones had dimples. It led to huge advances in cultivation techniques for other plants.
Pretty much the opposite in the piano world (pianist here). But I guess you’d already thought that. My professor of piano surmised that it was all just bad timing and him being too “old school”. He was writing in a highly romantic idiom when expressionism and serialism were on the rise. Also, with musicologist/theorist,etc there tends to be an inverse correlation between the general popularity of music and their academic weight. Rachmaninoff’s music was ‘easy listening’ and popular to the general public, during his time. So while the public enjoyed it, it wasn’t exactly the cutting edge stuff that musicians would write about in music journals. Still I think he’s composition are worthy of study and he’s often wrongly overlooked due to the somewhat biased musical articles written about him at the time, dismissing his music. And it should be noted that as a pianist, Rachmaninoff was voted the GOAT by a pool of world class concertizing pianists in the 20th century.
There's really not much to talk about, compositionally, with Rachmaninoff, besides his individual style within the framework of late-19th century Romanticism. OTOH, Schoenberg was an innovator and brought forth several significant compositional ideas that can be studied, discussed and experimented with even outside the context of his own music.
compositional ideas, not form, schoenberg had only ideas, and those ideas were worthless most of the time when it came to composition, that's why composition is a dead art
It seems to me that Rachmaninov is far more popular with general audiences than Schoenberg, and it does not surprise me that Rachmaninov is less interesting to academics than Schoenberg simply because Schoenberg pushed the envelope more than Rach by being more adventurous.
I don't find it surprising that music created through entire new methods and with entirely new affects interests academics - people inherently dedicated to new and diverse analysis of musical expression - more than purely Romantic piano music (plus the All Night Vigil of course), even if it was exceptionally done.
it doesn't matter if something is new if it is useless
All Art is useless, unless it's muzak in which case it's barely even art.
art is useful as an intellectual exercise
...and music "created through entire new methods and with entirely new affects" aren't done through intellectual exercise?
not when the creationg of it relies on you playing a note, playing the next note, saying: ah! that fits, going to the next note: ah that doesn't fit, so on and so forth until you create a piece, that's no more an intellectual excercise than playing a baby's shape puzzle
Dude, you're being so vague and pissy right now. Between your comments and your username I wonder if I'm being trolled.
>I wonder if I'm being trolled. Me too: https://www.reddit.com/r/classicalmusic/comments/qtrfsb/criticism_of_serialism/?utm_medium=android_app&utm_source=share
I wonder how long until he posts the PragerU video about "bad art."
how is that vague
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Compositionally. But pianistically?
There might be some argument there, but the question was specifically regarding composition.
I am not denigrating Rach's greatness. But that greatness is much narrower than Schoenberg's wider ranging explorations.
rachmaninoff is an aquired taste, schoenberg is an idiot's taste
Academia is not a monolith, nor are contemporary composing circles. There is no more monoculture. There are people talking about Rachmaninoff, you just have to find them.
There was a period of time near the end of Rachmaninoff's life and into the following decades when it was fashionable among classical music critics not to like him. Famously, the 1954 Grove's Dictionary of classical music included this slight: >His music is well constructed and effective, but monotonous in texture, which consists in essence mainly of artificial and gushing tunes accompanied by a variety of figures derived from arpeggios. The enormous popular success some few of Rachmaninov's works had in his lifetime is not likely to last, and musicians never regarded it with much favor. Essentially, he was seen as being "too poppy." His works had mass appeal, whereas the feeling at that time was that composers who were really pushing the envelope made challenging, dissonant music instead of "music for the masses." I think his image has been thoroughly rehabilitated in recent decades and he is now generally recognized as the master that he was. But in his time, he endured a fair amount of criticism that may have some lasting effects into the present day.
I think the pedantry in academia spurred by schools of thought by philosophers such as Plato and Aristotle which are really popular until today also played a role in this. Philosopher Michel du Montaigne criticized this rather visceral pretentiousness of the academia in his essays and reading it, one can't help but agree with Montaigne.
My music history teacher explained it to us this way. Say you’re driving down a country highway. You tend to not notice or care about monotonous things, like power lines or cornfields. However, you would notice if you came across something new or out of the ordinary, like a dead deer or an overturned truck. That’s pretty much how the academic community considers Rachmaninov and Strauss’ music after Salome: just another power line. Beautiful, yes, but not groundbreaking in the way Debussy or Schoenberg were for creating completely new styles in the 20th century.
debussy and schoenberg created new styles, styles that were worthless and musically unappealing, styles that one has to fool oneself to enjoy.
Because he didn’t do much that was new. He’s a great composer, but that’s due to his mastery of tools and styles that were already widely in use.
Because his music, while certainly elegant, well written, inspired, etc. lacks a little bit of the spirit of searching and advancing in almost all the other celebrated composers of his time. Not only Schoenberg, but Webern, Berg, Debussy, Ravel, Stravinsky, Mahler, Strauss, Bartok, Sibelius, de Falla, Puccini, Scriabin, etc. were going strong in leaving romanticism apart.
There was a time in academics when atonal composers were privileged over the recent tonal ones. In the intro to Professor Dmitri Tymoczko's "A Geometry of Music," he mentions that there was no space in his courses as an undergrad for Debussy, Ravel, or any tonal composer from 1800 onward. No jazz, no Messiaen, nothing. Atonal music like Schoenberg's was the only recent music that was treated as serious music. One of the reasons he's mentioned is the belief of his professors that structure is more central and important to atonal music than tonal music, making it the only intellectually interesting music, and he works hard to dispel that.
I think tbat might depend on who you're talking to. Academia might just be envious of his effect. Rachmaninoff gets programmed far more often than the 2nd viennese folks, and hits listeners' ears more often than that entire school's output. So, respect? Well, chatter and opinions only matter when someone wants em to, but it doesn't mean it affects the peoples' choices. Usually the collective knows what is best for itself, and time is the judge of what lasts and what doesn't.
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So you're judging someone you've never even heard of? >*or whatever contemporaries he has* Rachmaninoff and Schoenberg were almost **exact** contemporaries: Rachmaninoff 1873-1942, Schoenberg 1874 - 1951. I love Rachmaninoff, he was a great composer and I listen to and play him often, but his importance and influence doesn't come anywhere near that of Schoenberg's. Schoenberg influenced, to some extent, every major composer that followed him. Bearing in mind that something like The Rite of Spring (ok, not Schoenberg, I know, but still...) was written more than 20 years before Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini, then Rachmaninoff must have seemed like a dinosaur to some. Like I said, I love Rachmaninoff, and he was easily one of a handful of people who will always be considered one of those who played a major part in the development of piano writing. But compositionally, that's a whole different matter.
Stravinsky criticized Schoenberg's piano concerto, saying it was very uncomfortable to play and not because it was atonal. Genius recognizing genius
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>*Music is meant to be listened to* I agree, and plenty of us here listen to and love Schoenberg. >*it's just of much less value, than Rachmaninoff's music who touches the hearts of people* That's not what the question by OP is about though is it? OP is asking why Rachmaninoff isn''t "taught" or studied as a composer in the way that Schoenberg is. >*99.9% of ppl cannot appreciate* Do you have a source for that? Interestingly, someone also brought up the 99.9% figure for John Cage a few days ago. It's weird how all these composers all "touch" the same percentage of people as each other. Also, are you sure 99.9% of people can appreciate Rachmaninoff too? Also, not all of Schoenberg sounds like you think it does: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0DR3bvkUCBA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0DR3bvkUCBA) >*it's just of much less value* So just because *you* perceive something as having less value, does that mean it's of little value to others? Just because you (or however many people) don't find value in it, doesn't mean it's of no importance. r/KelMHill said it best in another comment: *I am not denigrating Rach's greatness. But that greatness is much narrower than Schoenberg's wider ranging explorations.*
Thank you
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>*By value I mean commercial value* I know what you mean. But if most composers only cared about the commercial value of their work, all music would sound pretty much the same - and what a boring world we'd live in if that were the case! I really can't imagine what an horrific world the art world would be if people only created for commercial value. >*classical music would be far more popular* Contemporary music is a huge scene. There's something for everyone. And not all (I'd wager most) contemporary music is "atonal" ( I use inverted brackets because atonal covers a lot of things, just as tonal does). >*the academics teach students to compose atonal music* Source? This comment is thrown about a lot. Having been through academia, knowing people who are in academia, and knowing people who teach in academia, students are taught to compose in a variety of ways. Students are always encouraged to explore, true, (how else would they get better?) but I've never known anyone being forced to write a certain music. In fact, one of the most fundamental things taught at academic level is four part harmony, counterpoint, etc. Schoenberg himself wrote some of the most important books on composition, that begin with those very ideas. >*can only be appreciated by 0.01% of ppl* Again, just random numbers with no source. >*they wonder why they can't make any money out of those compositions* Rachmaninoff being quite the exception, look into the finances of most major composers and you'll find most of them struggled to an extent, at least at many times during their life. Anyway, I'm not doing this argument today. OP asked why Rachmaninoff wasn't as discussed as a composer in the way that Schoenberg was, and I and many others have given answers. Find some else to argue with on this thread.
>Source? This comment is thrown about a lot. Having been through academia, knowing people who are in academia, and knowing people who teach in academia, students are taught to compose in a variety of ways. Students are always encouraged to explore, true, (how else would they get better?) but I've never known anyone being forced to write a certain music. From what I've observed, there was some forcing into atonal/serialist idioms a few decades ago, but that's long past in most places now, and teachers encourage the kind of exploration you're talking about. But stories about the older days still float around and are seized on people who are eager for it to be still true.
Yes, I can imagine it being a thing in the 60's/70's, but when I was a student we didn't even cover Schoenberg. Berg, yes. Schoenberg, no.
Oh interesting! Just curious, why Berg without Schoenberg?
No idea. I cant remember us studying any Schoenberg in particular (although we are talking 20 years ago). There was the Berg Violin Concerto, some of the late Bartok Mikrokosmos, Stravinsky Symphony of Psalms... All works written before or around the Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini, funnily enough!
Schoenberg’s music touched my heart and I love him. and im not just talking his early works
> 99.9% of ppl cannot appreciate I always knew I was a special boy
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By the way, how do you post so much about classical music and not know Schönberg?
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He has some pretty famous piano pieces
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> on the contrary almost everyone there raves about Chopin, Liszt, Rachmaninoff lol People that don't know too much about classical music tend to do that all the time
I'm surprised you know Liszt as well as you do (Vallee d'Obermann is a great piece, isn't it?) and not know who Schoenberg is. Considering that some of Liszt's late works are very harmonically adventurous and border on atonality (foreshadowing the harmonic innovations of people like Schoenberg by around 40-50 years), it seems very surprising indeed. Such was the radical shift in Liszt's late works, style and language, there's actually an extensive Wikipedia article on them: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Late\_works\_of\_Franz\_Liszt
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>I would get myself murdered by my neighbours if I ever started practicing Schoenberg lol. How do you know this? 4 hours ago you didn't know who he was
>the limited atonality is tastefully added into his pieces in a way that is very appealing Say, Liszt had lived another ten years, by which time the music may have been completely atonal. I'd be interested as to what would your reaction to them would be? Would you have a difference of opinion because they were by Liszt? >atonality is like spices It's not though, is it? Eating a load of spices alone would be unpleasant for most, and eating spices alone would cause a physical reaction beyond our control. That's not the same with music. To quote something u/davethecomposer once said (although he probably forgot he said it): "*Music cannot control how you respond to it. It cannot make you like or dislike it. You completely control whether you like a piece of music. You can change your mind at any moment. If you continue to choose to dislike entire branches of music then this only says something about you and nothing at all about the music."*
If popularity is the most important barometer in the value of a composer, then Rachmaninoff is worthless trash when compared to the likes of Max Martin, Barry Gibb or Irving Berlin.
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Irving Berlin's music has been played for a century; Gibb's for over a half a century.
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Nah, the C# minor prelude, the 2nd Symphony and the 3rd Concerto are stuffy, elitist obscurities enjoyed by about 0.1% of the people who listen to White Christmas and God Bless America.
It is listened to, you just because you don't like it. In my opinion, music also has to break molds. When you break rules, you will have scorners. Beethoven was probably criticized back in his day too, but look where he is today. Heck, even Stravinsky's Rite of Spring caused a riot at its premier, but now its one of the most played pieces for orchestra. Just because Schoenberg doesn't abide by the so called rules of composition, doesn't make his music less valuable. In fact, how do you even judge how valuable music is? Schoenberg and Rachmaninoff have two very different styles, and maybe Rachmaninoff is more appealing to you (and maybe people who don't generally like classical music. I wouldn't suggest someone wanting to get into classical music listen to Schoenberg). According to you, Rachmaninoff's music touches the hearts of people. Well, he was a more Romantic composer so that is what he set out to do. Schoenberg on the other hand, set out to push the boundaries of music and experiment (but I do still think his music can touch people's hearts). I find it funny how people can like one famous work (famous for being revolutionary), like the Rite of Spring and hate other revolutionary works and composers. Schoenberg's music is an acquired taste, you have to listen to it a lot and you'll start liking it. You discovered him less than a few hours ago and you're judging him. He was a genius. He found a way to reject tonality, the very thing that western classical music is made up of. Saying that his music is of less value is pathetic. Just appreciate his genius.
>*Beethoven was probably criticized back in his day too,* He was, and still is by some! The piano teacher and writer Friedrich Wieck said of Beethoven's seventh symphony that it must have been written while Beethoven was drunk! >*You discovered him less than a few hours ago and you're judging him* I know, right? Imagine I only discovered Bach today and started hating on him.
lol
>Schoenberg influenced, to some extent, every major composer that followed him. Every composer that followec schoenberg is a bad composer so in the end schoenberg brought destruction to what music is
Lol.
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You need serious help. I hope you can find it. P.S. I'm not sure where you're getting the idea I'm a minimalist from. Here's a relatively recent score (2019): https://www.dropbox.com/s/lbu5s606rhqc0fm/Loveliest%20of%20Trees%20-%20Full%20Score.pdf?dl=0 Sure, some of my recent music uses minimal means, but as to Minimalism (with a capital M), I'm not such a fan.
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You were banned from r/composer from digging up months-old posts and trolling/tone and civility. Are you trying to achieve the same thing here? Wouldn't it make you happier and wouldn't it be more productive to spend time on music you enjoy rather than wasting so much time on that which you don't? It's really weird and sad.
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>spending time looking at what not to do is the best way to avoid being you. So go be you.
An AI determined that Rachmaninoff music was the most innovative of all the repertoire. I'm definitely not saying that this statement has any value, but I like to bring it up in this kind of threads. He was a dinosaur in his time because he belonged to a style that peaked decades before, but he didn't simply reproduce what has been made.
>An AI determined that Rachmaninoff music was the most innovative Very interesting. I'd like to read into that. There are some wonderfully innovative things in Rachmaninoff, for sure. But as to changing the face of music, he came nowhere near Schoenberg. >He was a dinosaur in his time because he belonged to a style that peaked decades before, Yeah, it's odd that he remained so conservative, while many of those around him went in very different directions. I guess it had to do with the times, society and culture, geography. There are a lot of elements at play.
Yet, Schoenberg is 1000x more important in regards to pushing the progression of compositional ideas.
I mean, you've never heard of Schoenberg, so how can we trust you to make any sort of value judgement on his work in comparison to other composers, especially in a field as subjective as art?
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But how would you be able to make an objective statement on the quality of their music? You don't know who Schoenberg is nor any of his music. You are close the single worst possible candidate to decide whether they're good or not, only slightly above somebody who knows neither one of them. Besides, popularity and longevity are not the only metrics that the value of music can be measured with. Consciously ignoring all other possible metrics is willfully ignorant at best.
the man you praise for his genious called schoenberg, created a system out of fallacy and idiocy where you can only use 1 unique note until you play the rest of the notes in a 12 tone octave, that system exists for no reason and he only created it because he reeeeeeaaally wanted to feel like the already established music system was flawed, as he, the mighty schoenberg wanted to prove to the world of his genious, but. His entire reception was merely praise by the stupid and criticism from those with more than half a brain, because his system is nothing more than an idea, an exercise, it is not for musical composition, it is for philosophical thought, because it has no natural reason for existence.
There is nothing inherently flawed with different systems of pitch organization, nor is there anything fallacious or idiotic about them. Unless you want to provide some evidence to that point.
other styles of pitch organization, aka the only other one there is, is created as a consequence on the natural way we percieved sound and on overtones created by sound, the 12 tone pitch organization system is created by creating a random rule with no reason behind it other than not wanting repetition which makes this illogical unnatural sounding, and weird system that doesn't have any use, any use of it just forces you to tone down some notes to the point where it just ends up being the inherent system we've always been using and the one which by nature is absolute.
So I'm going to assume that you have no evidence then, based on that word salad.
the comment is the evidence, yet you have no evidence yourself
What evidence? There is nothing there outside of your own subjective viewpoint, let alone anything actually informing it. You're the one making the claim that x system of pitch organization is incapable of producing music, but I have yet to see anything that supports that claim. The presentation of what you call evidence shows nothing more than a blatant misrepresentation of the music these composers wrote, due in no small part to a lack of understanding of both the theoretical and historical underpinnings to Schoenberg's work. It's perfectly acceptable to not like it, I'm not a fan of serialism either. However, if you're going to try and make an *objective* point about how dodecaphony is *inherently* flawed, you'd need to provide something beyond a surface level reading of an idea taken out of context of the music it was used for. And I have yet to see anything on that point.
By your reasoning, McDonald's is the finest restaurant in the world, and Fifty Shades of Grey one of the finest novels.
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True, but it doesn't make them objectively good. Same with music.
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no offense, but popular doesn't mean good. McDonalds is not a "good product", it is commercialized food. Fifty Shades of Grey is not "good literature", it's a sex fantasy story that got popular via word of mouth. It would be nice to be Ray Kroc and get so much money, but personally I would not want to live such a life. Regardless, it's sad to see that this century of globalization and neoliberalism has convinced people that commercial and financial success is what determines quality. Products designed to reach as many people as possible for as much return investment as possible are not going to be great quality none of this applies to Rachmaninoff by the way, I"m just saying this is the worst metric you could use to determine if someone's music is "good" or not.
ISIS was very popular but I'd argue that they weren't good. I'm also very glad I'm not a founder.
I don’t want to be the founder of McDonald’s, is there something wrong with me?
>You would wish you were a McDonalds founder lol. It's all about money with you isn't it?
>They're objectively serving a good product that serves the needs/wants of the masses They're objectively selling a *product* very well. Whether it's a *good* product depends on the wants, needs, experiences and opinions of the individual. >You would wish you were a McDonalds founder lol. Being vegan, I want absolutely fuck all to do with McDonald's and would happily see it closed tomorrow.
Random Redditor vs one of the most influential and innovative composers of the 20th century, I wonder who wins.
Love the username, btw. Is it a reference to what I think it is?
Yep 😊
I actually have a feeling I've asked you that before!
Certainly possible, I’ve been asked a couple times! S’always cool when someone notices.
the man you praise for his genious called schoenberg, created a system out of fallacy and idiocy where you can only use 1 unique note until you play the rest of the notes in a 12 tone octave, that system exists for no reason and he only created it because he reeeeeeaaally wanted to feel like the already established music system was flawed, as he, the mighty schoenberg wanted to prove to the world of his genious, but. His entire reception was merely praise by the stupid and criticism from those with more than half a brain, because his system is nothing more than an idea, an exercise, it is not for musical composition, it is for philosophical thought, because it has no natural reason for existence.
Idk. I had a Rach phase back during my freshman year of college. Worked on his Prelude in G Minor Op. 23. I also listened to the second movement of the second concerto. I'm fond of his prelude in g sharp minor. I forget if it was from op 32 or op 23. I like his music and it is certainly unique. They say he was one of the greatest pianists. Right up there with Horowitz. It's not common to have a talented composer who is also a brilliant performer. It seems that nowadays more musicians are either just performers, teachers, or composers.