We forget that there were thousands of mediocre composers in past centuries who have, surprise, been forgotten. Only the greatest have survived, leaving us to think that only our era is awash in mediocrity.
The problem in the arts is not that good art is no longer produced, it is that the world of "high art" has been taken over by a cult of unaesthetic garbage for whom pretending to like contemporary "art" is a status symbol. The average DeviantArt page probably has more artistic merit than the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.
In architecture the problem is much more severe because unlike the visual arts and music, you need a huge budget in order to build a building.
It's very effective for generating certain types of atmosphere. "Candyman" would not be the same movie if someone other than Philip Glass had scored it.
Is Phillip Glass atonal? I'm not at all expert so I genuinely ask. The atonal music (labeled as such) that I've heard seemed awful to me but I've always enjoyed Glass, especially the soundtrack to Powaqqatsi.
I looked into it further. I had heard his music described as "atonal before," but apparently he is heavily influenced by atonal composers, but isn't considered one himself. His style is usually described as "minimalist."
The St. Louis Symphony Orchestra has a program where they screen a film as the orchestra performs the soundtrack along with the film. We recently attended How to Train Your Dragon with our children and it was wonderful. Every seat was full.
Movie soundtracks have been an important stepping stone for introducing our children to instrumental classical music more broadly. If a child enjoys Star Wars, it’s not a big stretch to introduce them to Holst’s The Planets. And from there to Beethoven’s Fifth. And so on.
Thinking that the soundtrack of Cloud Atlas somehow belongs to the same "genre" as Beethoven's symphonies is absurd. The track you shared in this post, "Prelude - The Atlas March," ironically has much more in common with some kind of mid-20th-century minimalism than with the Romantic period. Sorry, but no one with knowledge of academic/classical music (or music in general) could agree with anything written in this post.
I think you're stuck on the superficial idea that if something sounds more or less "tonal" or seems to be written for an orchestra, then it must be Romantic music. Romanticism is not really about that. In fact, those two elements are far more prominent innovations of the Baroque period (tonality) and Classicism (orchestration). On the contrary, Romanticism has more to do with the attempt to expand both tonality and orchestration, driven by the development of musical instruments and the opportunities that brought to composers. But more importantly, you're ignoring that a musical work is not just "something that sounds tonal to my ear", it's usually a big work of art, with a particular interest in it's formal development (let's say that form is the structure of the piece, considering how the elements are presented, contrasted, developed, and how they interact during the different sections, and also how the bigger sections themselves interact, transition, open, close, etc.). Comparing a Mahler symphony to a film soundtrack is like comparing a great novel to an advertising pamphlet because they both use the same letters of the alphabet. It makes no sense.
Which brings me to the next point. Why is there a need to compare film music with academic music? They’re entirely different things, and that’s perfectly fine. You don’t need to find academic or intellectual merits in the music you enjoy by comparing it to the great music from the past. You're actually doing film music a disservice. Film music has its own merits. Composing music quickly for a film is no easy feat. If I remember correctly, Puccini was once asked to compose music for a film, and he responded with something like, "Sure, send the money. In ten years I’ll have the score ready." Heck, even Schoenberg himself really wanted to write music for a big Hollywood film and never managed to get hired!
I’ll leave you with one last thought about this post. I believe it was Daniel Barenboim who said that when someone talks about music, they’re really talking more about themselves than about music.
What about Philip Glass and Steve Reich? Those two are consistently ranked as among the top 5 living classical composers, and they don't make atonal music. They are even direct descendants of the classical tradition, in terms of their student/teacher relationships.
Does this come down to the definition of "atonal"? When I think of atonal music, I think of Schoenberg- composers who wanted random tones and sounds so as to not convey any sense of harmony. Philip Glass and Steve Reich write music in terms of chords and harmonies and harmonic progressions as much as any pre-atonal composer.
The terminology is somewhat muddled. "Tonal music" can either refer to any music that has a tonal center, or it can more narrowly refer to music that follows the rules of "functional harmony" (which includes most Classical and Romantic music as well as lots of jazz and most pop music). So if you have a tonal center, but you break some of the old rules of how harmony is "supposed" to work, that can be tonal in the former sense while not being tonal in the latter sense. This describes the music of lots of 20th and 21st century composers' music, like Glass and Reich, but also earlier examples like Debussy and Stravinsky, lots of more complex jazz, and lots of film scores.
Atonality has never been a defining feature of all "modern" classical music, and later tonal music should not be lumped in with Romanticism. Schoenberg was a ground-breaking composer twice over - his early works, before he invented 12-tone serialism, were already a break from Romanticism ( https://youtu.be/yw6HK5X6tW8?si=ROOfST5H26SvfwTC ). Much of "modernism" (the good stuff, imo) follows in the footsteps of early Schoenberg as opposed to late Schoenberg.
Part of the problem with later Schoenberg, to my taste, is that he threw out harmony and rhythmic groove at the same time - in many of his atonal works he started deliberately obscuring where the beat is. Atonal music that you can tap your toe to can be a lot more appealing (one of my personal favorite examples: https://youtu.be/tnuC5o_Iwn0?si=trroKwNezOkYO6yV )
As a performing musician, a lot of my favorite classical music is the good 20th century stuff (Shostakovich, Stravinsky, Copland, Debussy, Britten, Ravel). So I get a little touchy about any simplistic classification that implies all "modern music" is that icky unlistenable atonal stuff, and anyone newer who writes anything good is just a "Late Romantic."
Great post! I think that it's also true of philosophical-political Romantic era: the Pandora's box Rousseau opened not only has not been closed back, it still expels utopian dreams, that is, collective autocratic experiments...
I agree to raise the status of movie soundtracks - some people consider them "not classical" for some reason which seems silly to me. But I think Bryan's just not looking at new music or something. There's tons of music being written not just for movies, which are complete opposite of atonal and much of it is immediately accessible. It's also not true that there aren't widely loved composers since Shostakovich, there's Arvo Part, Philip Glass, Max Richter, John Adams, Steve Reich, Penderecki, just to name a few of the most well known ones.
A few more I'd recommend that fall squarely into stylistic Romanticism: El Cid (Rosza), Star Trek 2 (Horner), The Count of Monte Cristo (1990s) (Ed Shearmur), Conan the Barbarian (Basil Poledouris), Dances with Wolves (John Barry), and Scent of a Woman (Thomas Newman)
We forget that there were thousands of mediocre composers in past centuries who have, surprise, been forgotten. Only the greatest have survived, leaving us to think that only our era is awash in mediocrity.
A couple of great composers barely survived oblivion too - Bach and Vivaldi for a start.
The problem in the arts is not that good art is no longer produced, it is that the world of "high art" has been taken over by a cult of unaesthetic garbage for whom pretending to like contemporary "art" is a status symbol. The average DeviantArt page probably has more artistic merit than the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.
In architecture the problem is much more severe because unlike the visual arts and music, you need a huge budget in order to build a building.
Scott Alexander has been arguing about "taste" in arts like architecture for that reason:
https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/friendly-and-hostile-analogies-for
While I’d enjoy being pretentious on this issue, I love Copland.
Atonal and other modern music has definitely found a home in film as well.
It's very effective for generating certain types of atmosphere. "Candyman" would not be the same movie if someone other than Philip Glass had scored it.
Is Phillip Glass atonal? I'm not at all expert so I genuinely ask. The atonal music (labeled as such) that I've heard seemed awful to me but I've always enjoyed Glass, especially the soundtrack to Powaqqatsi.
I looked into it further. I had heard his music described as "atonal before," but apparently he is heavily influenced by atonal composers, but isn't considered one himself. His style is usually described as "minimalist."
The St. Louis Symphony Orchestra has a program where they screen a film as the orchestra performs the soundtrack along with the film. We recently attended How to Train Your Dragon with our children and it was wonderful. Every seat was full.
Movie soundtracks have been an important stepping stone for introducing our children to instrumental classical music more broadly. If a child enjoys Star Wars, it’s not a big stretch to introduce them to Holst’s The Planets. And from there to Beethoven’s Fifth. And so on.
Great points.
I would also add that access to the greatest works of music are far more easily accessible to the masses than in previous eras.
We mustn't forget Morricone's "The Mission"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s7w-IeNR9ko
Thinking that the soundtrack of Cloud Atlas somehow belongs to the same "genre" as Beethoven's symphonies is absurd. The track you shared in this post, "Prelude - The Atlas March," ironically has much more in common with some kind of mid-20th-century minimalism than with the Romantic period. Sorry, but no one with knowledge of academic/classical music (or music in general) could agree with anything written in this post.
I think you're stuck on the superficial idea that if something sounds more or less "tonal" or seems to be written for an orchestra, then it must be Romantic music. Romanticism is not really about that. In fact, those two elements are far more prominent innovations of the Baroque period (tonality) and Classicism (orchestration). On the contrary, Romanticism has more to do with the attempt to expand both tonality and orchestration, driven by the development of musical instruments and the opportunities that brought to composers. But more importantly, you're ignoring that a musical work is not just "something that sounds tonal to my ear", it's usually a big work of art, with a particular interest in it's formal development (let's say that form is the structure of the piece, considering how the elements are presented, contrasted, developed, and how they interact during the different sections, and also how the bigger sections themselves interact, transition, open, close, etc.). Comparing a Mahler symphony to a film soundtrack is like comparing a great novel to an advertising pamphlet because they both use the same letters of the alphabet. It makes no sense.
Which brings me to the next point. Why is there a need to compare film music with academic music? They’re entirely different things, and that’s perfectly fine. You don’t need to find academic or intellectual merits in the music you enjoy by comparing it to the great music from the past. You're actually doing film music a disservice. Film music has its own merits. Composing music quickly for a film is no easy feat. If I remember correctly, Puccini was once asked to compose music for a film, and he responded with something like, "Sure, send the money. In ten years I’ll have the score ready." Heck, even Schoenberg himself really wanted to write music for a big Hollywood film and never managed to get hired!
I’ll leave you with one last thought about this post. I believe it was Daniel Barenboim who said that when someone talks about music, they’re really talking more about themselves than about music.
What about Philip Glass and Steve Reich? Those two are consistently ranked as among the top 5 living classical composers, and they don't make atonal music. They are even direct descendants of the classical tradition, in terms of their student/teacher relationships.
Does this come down to the definition of "atonal"? When I think of atonal music, I think of Schoenberg- composers who wanted random tones and sounds so as to not convey any sense of harmony. Philip Glass and Steve Reich write music in terms of chords and harmonies and harmonic progressions as much as any pre-atonal composer.
The terminology is somewhat muddled. "Tonal music" can either refer to any music that has a tonal center, or it can more narrowly refer to music that follows the rules of "functional harmony" (which includes most Classical and Romantic music as well as lots of jazz and most pop music). So if you have a tonal center, but you break some of the old rules of how harmony is "supposed" to work, that can be tonal in the former sense while not being tonal in the latter sense. This describes the music of lots of 20th and 21st century composers' music, like Glass and Reich, but also earlier examples like Debussy and Stravinsky, lots of more complex jazz, and lots of film scores.
Atonality has never been a defining feature of all "modern" classical music, and later tonal music should not be lumped in with Romanticism. Schoenberg was a ground-breaking composer twice over - his early works, before he invented 12-tone serialism, were already a break from Romanticism ( https://youtu.be/yw6HK5X6tW8?si=ROOfST5H26SvfwTC ). Much of "modernism" (the good stuff, imo) follows in the footsteps of early Schoenberg as opposed to late Schoenberg.
Part of the problem with later Schoenberg, to my taste, is that he threw out harmony and rhythmic groove at the same time - in many of his atonal works he started deliberately obscuring where the beat is. Atonal music that you can tap your toe to can be a lot more appealing (one of my personal favorite examples: https://youtu.be/tnuC5o_Iwn0?si=trroKwNezOkYO6yV )
As a performing musician, a lot of my favorite classical music is the good 20th century stuff (Shostakovich, Stravinsky, Copland, Debussy, Britten, Ravel). So I get a little touchy about any simplistic classification that implies all "modern music" is that icky unlistenable atonal stuff, and anyone newer who writes anything good is just a "Late Romantic."
Great post! I think that it's also true of philosophical-political Romantic era: the Pandora's box Rousseau opened not only has not been closed back, it still expels utopian dreams, that is, collective autocratic experiments...
Good Bad and Ugly
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=enuOArEfqGo
I agree to raise the status of movie soundtracks - some people consider them "not classical" for some reason which seems silly to me. But I think Bryan's just not looking at new music or something. There's tons of music being written not just for movies, which are complete opposite of atonal and much of it is immediately accessible. It's also not true that there aren't widely loved composers since Shostakovich, there's Arvo Part, Philip Glass, Max Richter, John Adams, Steve Reich, Penderecki, just to name a few of the most well known ones.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TJ6Mzvh3XCc (1978)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f_JmZ-F9We4 (2004)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dWdunw33el4 (2023)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vbarbrKwyFw (2013)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i_a2pfwKjIY (1995)
that's just some that came up on my apple music recommendations but there's a whole world of new music if he sincerely wants to listen.
Some of these are new to me. Duly earmarked!
A few more I'd recommend that fall squarely into stylistic Romanticism: El Cid (Rosza), Star Trek 2 (Horner), The Count of Monte Cristo (1990s) (Ed Shearmur), Conan the Barbarian (Basil Poledouris), Dances with Wolves (John Barry), and Scent of a Woman (Thomas Newman)
I made a Youtube Playlist of all the songs Bryan highlighted in this post: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLXh4UKFYpwB2Ugrt7T5JKe2JNFWi9acMO
Fuck I love Cloud Atlas.
And (as you probably know) the sextet isn't just relevant to that particular story, it's the central thing that ties the 6 narratives together.
Two of my favorites that are rarely talked about are how to train your dragon and bridge to terabithia.