Comments on PROMETHEAN ANTAGONIST: Nihilism In Art And Life

Some very wise and insightful comments. Thank you....

2005-03-20T17:48:00.000+09:00

Some very wise and insightful comments. Thank you.

Thank you for your brave post, on the hateful reje...

2004-12-20T07:32:00.000+09:00

Thank you for your brave post, on the hateful rejection of beauty by so many "modernistic" and "progressive" composers. Paradoxically it is true that beauty rests in the eye of the beholder, yet that merely thinking of something as beautiful is not enough to make it so. Those who defend the beauteous traditions of the past, hear often these days, "Yes, but what is ugly to you, may be beautiful to another." Who can disagree? A seven-year old's scribblings are certainly beautiful to the child, and perhaps an indiscriminatory mother.

In music the true source of beauty, the sound, has largely been forgotten. We are now prone to praise invented systems, justifications for a work's existence - often overly technical analyses, sometimes trite political statements - as beautiful; we are prone to praise celebrations of the ugly aspects of human nature incorporated into art as beautiful. The mere fact that these ugly aspects can be expressed, does not necessarily qualify those expressions as beautiful.

One cannot argue that beauty is totally subjective; after all, many composers knew ugliness in sound and deliberately employed it, for example Stravinsky and Bartok. They desired the effect of great dissonance, and ugliness, and knew how to produce it. That is fact enough, to remember the existence of beauty and ugliness in music.

Many composers these days have been subdued by the Emperor sans vetements syndrome, believing that to carry on traditions of the past is worthless compared to the neverending drive for "progress." As you stated in your post, others have reacted against that. I recall the words of Honegger, who said about Schoenberg and his disciples, "The cure for drinking sulphuric acid will be to drink syrup." More prophetic words could not have been spoken.

And may nonsense bless you.

2004-12-16T03:25:00.000+09:00

And may nonsense bless you.

Point well taken. I Didn't mean to sound like so...

2004-11-28T17:05:00.000+09:00

Point well taken.

I Didn't mean to sound like some ultra-stodgy harmonic puritan. I fully recognize the wider emotional range available to modern composition. There are passages in John Corigliano's Symphony Number One that are extremely dissonant, yet he ultimately puts such dissonance into context -- the work as a whole is full of meaning.

There are people who have never warmed up to some of Stravinsky's music -- a mere matter of taste I suppose -- but they probably recognize the unerlying order and purpose in, for instance, The Right Of Spring.

Hans Werner Henze's symphonies comes to mind as an example of something I find overly abrasive.

I fully realize that there are some who's tastes simply differ from my own. It's even possible that I've failed to give such novel compositions a truly fair hearing. None the less, I think a distinction can be made between an artist who seeks to express something and one who is deliberately trying to express nothing. Schoenberg certainly wrote some beautiful works but what do his purely atonal works tell us about anything? They may make some kind of intellectual statement, but they're not beautiful...they're not even ugly!

Perhaps this issue is better addressed in the visual arts. I'd say that, if someone rolls around naked in the mud and says it's "art" it's about the same as saying "destroy the system" and calling it "political philosophy." The point can be argued intellectually, but so can murdering a few million people.

God bless the simple folks who can see through the nonsense.

I'd be interested in other examples beyond Stockha...

2004-11-28T10:08:00.000+09:00

I'd be interested in other examples beyond Stockhausen of 20th century music that you think expresses nihlism. I personally prefer Hanson to Stockhausen as well but I suspect I like other music that doesn't meet your artistic beauty criterion.

Robert Gable
http://rgable.typepad.com/aworks