pretentious classical music snobs vs. musician with AS

Post Reply New Topic

I'm a big fan of classical music, but not necessarily the people that support it. I'm talking about the benefactor types. The people that donate tons of money, just so they can feel good about themselves. Along with that money comes a sense of entitlement and they think they can disparage anyone "lower" than themselves.

Just yesterday, I went to my friend's orchestra concert at Orchestra Hall here in Chicago (a fancy place). She is assistant concertmaster of the Civic Orchestra, so she was able to get me an awesome ticket in a center box. This is where all the donors have their seats. I am a classical musician, but I guess I don't really carry myself all that well, probably due to my AS. I'm also really young-looking, as most donors are older. Not only did three ticket ushers come up to me to question my ticket, but a guy sitting next to me tapped me on the shoulder and said in the most condescending voice, "these seats are only reserved for special people. Did you find your ticket on the floor?" I simply explained that my ticket was reserved under my name at will call, and I showed him the ticket with my name on the envelope.

I told my friend what happened. She said she was treated the same way. For another concert, she sat in the same section when she was a guest of the conductor and she carries herself really well, as opposed to me. Honestly, I don't even think these rich people donate this money because they actually care about the arts. They do it so they can look good and get their name listed in the program. I'm positive they spend more money on their plastic surgeries and ballet lessons for their cat. I think it's also the reason why more "regular" people seem to be repelled from going to classical music concerts. They feel like they can't fit in with the crowd and they let themselves be intimidated by these types.

If theres one group of fans I find I generally dislike it's fans of classical music

I am really into classical, I've been playing the piano for years, but you know what i see when I hear people who like classical? how much they honestly believe classical is above and beyond all other music, how it's obviously the high brow complex stuff that the proles honestly can't understand, how often I see the repeated comment "It's a shame most people my age don't listen to music like this nowadays", I don't think I know a fan group less tolerant of "lesser" forms of music meant for feeble minds. I certainly don't know of rockers who think rock is above and beyond all other music in it's complexity and form.

I particularly hate how they make me feel when a couple of people who like classical are talking and I decide to say I like rock music first, and how I get this implicit reaction "he isn't as sophisticated as us".

I agree too. I just got done with a music theory course in high school, based on classical elements. I could immediately point out the choir kids (as opposed to the band kids or those who were involved in neither) because they seemed to be the "musical high society." Not only did they always think they were right, they were very picky and not open minded to any "break" in the music rules whatsoever. "Ewww that's wierd, why is there a diminished chord in there" etc etc.
You get something similar, but opposite in the other type of music I like- metal (especially underground). There are LEGIONS of so called true metalheads who hate just about any popular style of music, and continue bashing it for no reason when they could just avoid it. I know what I like and what I don't like, but I'm not going to pay attention to it if I don't like it.

I know how they think. Classical elitists say that classical music has more ornate chord progressions and theory. Well that's not always true. It's still the basic I-V-I that underlies alot of the more elaborate nuances. Even if classical music does have more complicated theory, there are plenty of reasons why a classical musician would catastrophically fail as a rock musician. This reminds me of an Einstein quote: "Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid."

Next time they say something like that, just remember that all the best composers broke rules. Those same composers were bashed by the ostentatious critics, but were later revered by a new generation of snobbery. Your classmates are by no means showing off their good musicianship by being a bunch of rule-bound automatons.

There are snobs like that in any field of interest. There has been, and will always be, people who think they know everything and think anyone who disagrees or doesn't appear to meet their standards is inferior. If you really want to have some fun eavesdrop on people discussing art at an art gallery.

I went to a music school where jazz dominated the curriculum, and it was readily apparent in many of the students. Example: I'm a big fan of blues music. One of my classmates found out. She said, "How can you listen to that? It's just the same three chords."

Out of curiosity, what school?

I have a degree in music education and master of music in composition. I went through a heavy "music snob" phase that I gradually broke myself from beginning about a year into my grad studies.

Here are my thoughts on "the rules":

There are really no such things as "rules" in music. What you DO have are very broad, general "conventions" of music-making that people at various points in music history tend to follow and use creatively in their own way to appeal to whatever audience they want to appeal to. Generally speaking, people find music that follows Palestrina-esque harmony to be the most "beautiful" while close, dissonant harmonies of moderns strike people as "unpleasant" or "ugly." Within the general, unwritten framework of various historical periods, you have a number of sub-genres of music, each with their own conventions and procedures. It's only in retrospect that composers and music teachers look back and say, "Hey, when this composer or that composer did THIS, it was really nice, and that composer generally tended to do THAT in nearly every piece of music he wrote. Therefore, if I want to make beautiful music, I need to emulate this or practice that skill." Johann Fux's counterpoint was a groundbreaking text for its time, and classical period (1700's) composers SWORE by that text. It still forms the basis for modal counterpoint texts today, though the methodology of teaching it has adjusted somewhat for present-day students (I barely passed modal counterpoint, thus I stick with what I know--atonal music!! !).

The only "rule" is do what you want to do. Anything else is just a formulation of how to get the desired results. Atonal and serial music seems to break the "rules" of harmony, but in actuality the foundation of atonal music is conventional harmony. By that I mean if you want to avoid the classical tendency to resolve dissonance in prescribed ways, you need to understand those resolutions in order to understand how to avoid them. You need to understand why a "tonal center" or "key area" is important in order to avoid returning to one. 12-tone procedure is so successful at what it does because it systematizes the avoidance of consonant harmony and allows the composer to carefully sculpt musical patterns that avoid melodic and harmonic tonality.

The only thing limiting about 12-tone system is the composer's imagination. There are certain "rules" that students are mistakenly taught about the procedure, and so a lot of serial work is really based on stereotype and cliche. The procedure as taught is basically this:

1. Order the 12 tones such that each tone appears only once and no tone repeats.
2. Invert the intervals.
3. Construct a 12-tone matrix with the prime form at the top and the inversion form descending on the left side of the matrix.
4. Transpose the prime form by the interval of the inversion form.
5. Use each form of the tone row in its entirety, writing each note in sequence, repeating nothing (though you may step through a row form backwards if desired).

If you follow the procedure STRICTLY, the results are way too limiting. What I do is combine row forms, usually a prime form or an inversion form and its retrograde so that new note combinations are produced BUT retain the organic unity of the tone-row structure. My personal style includes playing notes that end up in sequence as chords to produce harmonies, repeating groups of notes as ostinato patterns, using some notes as "pedal tones," and intentionally creating implied "key centers," which is really a big no-no but I don't care!

Another mistake is thinking that tone rows have to be iterated in their entirety by a single instrument or instrument group. "Classic" serial composition involves a procedure called "klangfarbenmelodie" where the melody is spread across an entire orchestra. It's a very "sparkly" or "pointillistic" effect, and done well it's absolutely breathtaking. There are all kinds of musical effects or procedures a composer can come up with to create this kind of music, and it's a vastly under-appreciated musical art form.

In my studies, I really enjoyed reading Charles Wuorinen's work "Simple Composition" in which he makes a number of suggestions as to how to approach this kind of writing. I look at Wuorinen's ideas as "friendly suggestions" rather than honor-bound "rules." Milton Babbit wrote EXTENSIVELY using serial procedures and catalogued so many properties of atonal sets and tone-row construction. Anton Webern made remarkably elegant use of the Schoenberg system in his short career--while his use of serial procedures are boring by present-day standards, his compositions are absolutely gorgeous. I wrote a paper on this one:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XKD_tZr-ZpY[/youtube]
My opinion is this tune really embodies what 12-tone composition is all about--exploration of timbre/texture, extensive use of klangfarbenmelodie as a driving force rather than dependence on dissonant-to-consonant tonal resolution or static rhythm. More recent atonal compositions rely on rhythm as a driving force behind classical models of tension/release rather than pitch and harmony. However, a common criticism of the procedure in recent times is that compositions tend to be written to be "playable" and thus are too "comatose" to be really "listenable." This is something I've been doing deliberately as of late in my own compositions, right now in the vein of electronic space music and I'm trying more and more to incorporate multimedia in my work to offset some of the more "unpleasant" effects of the sound medium:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XQMGxDdQOp4[/youtube]
In order to maintain much of the "classic" cohesion of 12-tone procedure, I incorporated an element of "chance" (a nod to John Cage, obviously, and somewhat also inspired by Iannis Xenakis) by assigning pitches to poker cards, shuffling the cards, and writing down the result. On paper, rather than using traditional music notation, I wrote out my "composition" in an Excel spreadsheet and improvised the result when I recorded it. Technically I could step through the recording and notate it in a readable score form, but why bother? Schoenberg is probably rolling in his grave over my abuse of his system and the semi-randmomness of the note order--but "notes" are the least important element in my use of serial procedure. You'll also notice that some of my "happy accidents" result in consonant harmonies, if only briefly, and I felt no need to go back and correct my "mistakes."

===

All that said to say this: Nothing I've done is really "new" other than the fact that I created it, and I have a broad range of influences in creating the work. The rules aren't really "written" rules, though there are some conventions that serve as a starting point. Regardless of the time period a composer composes in, this is a general tendency. Mozart was far from the most original composer of his time--he just happened to be amazingly skilled at his craft and produced a vast amount of work in a short period of time. But rules? He didn't really follow any "rules." All the rules are are very general and broad tendencies that composers have within relatively small time periods. It wasn't until the 20th century when music scholars starting writing down their observations of notated music. Music became much easier to understand then, and recognizing and following certain conventions has made making music much easier than it was at one time, not to mention vast changes in technology. The only "rules" any composer is really bound by are his own.

Whatever taste I have for "classical" music I acquired by myself and did not have rammed down my throat by some snobbish teacher. There are times when I think
the arts education establishment is a false economy.

Thumbs way down on snobbery, elitism, cliquism, etc. It does seem like a large percentage of classical music fans are snobs, unfortunately. (Of course, maybe it's just that a large percentage of people in general are snobs about their interests.)

Most of the time, the best option is to just ignore them.

.

How does that fit the definition of a false economy? The only thing I could think of is that parents spend less money on a cheap teacher who is poorly qualified, but need to spend more money later to hire someone else to unteach the bad habits from the cheap teacher. It doesn't have anything to do with elitists or snobbery, which is what my post was originally about.

I was referring to public school teachers who try ram their tastes and biases down your throat. I only had one music teacher who actually taught me anything
about music and only one art teacher who taught me how to draw and paint. Many of our required courses taught little if anything of value.
I was not referring to private lessons. Those should be for those with a true love and aptitude for music, art or dance. Trying to force a child to be
something he is not has all sorts of nasty consequences.

When I referred to arts education as a false economy I was talking about all those high school English courses I was required
to take simply to justify some teacher's paycheck.

As for theater snobs there is not much we can do about them. They are everywhere and they think their patronage buys them all sorts of rights and privileges.
Most of them really do not know what is worth supporting from what is trash unless someone tells them so. We children and madmen know and speak the truth.....
The Emperor is Naked!! !!

This is a bit off-topic with the thread, but I feel it needs to be said.

I don't know where I'd be without my English class. If it wasn't for a formal education in English, I wouldn't be aware of idioms or sarcasm, nor would I have figured out how to "look beneath the surface" when people use words. That's exactly what alot of aspies have trouble with, and lucky for me my English courses taught me how to do those things. I struggled and I got frustrated when everyone else seemed to "get it," but I learned. Believe me, their paychecks are fully justified and they deserve every cent.

I'm still not sure what you mean by a false economy though. A false economy is when you buy something cheap to save money, but then have to spend more money later when the thing breaks.

You absolutely need to force kids to practice music. It's how I learned, it's how untalented children learn, and it's how even the most talented child prodigies learn. Yo-Yo Ma himself said that his parents had to force him to practice. Very few children will voluntarily go to practice. My mom had to force me to play. There was alot of drama and tears because I hated piano with an outstanding level of adamance. Lucky for me, my mom still forced me to play and now that I'm more mature, I enjoy playing. It's much like going to school; you may not like it, but it builds character and twenty years later you'll be happy you persevered.

There are no "nasty consequences" to teaching a child something he may not be naturally good at, or something he may not be interested in. There is great value in learning things that are outside of your comfort zone. If I didn't learn how to push myself, I wouldn't be so "high functioning." Kids with AS especially need to learn to push themselves forward, because they seem to be victims of the "I'm an aspie" excuse. As a result, there are both low self-esteem and depression epidemics among the aspie community.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VfQY8_jFZKU[/youtube]

I've been listening to metal since 1990, and it is still my favorite type of music. I like it because of the complexity, no other style comes close. However, I do like other styles of music, even mainstream pop and some country, depending on my mood.

That's a great story. And the orchestras wonder why their audience is all AARP+

The pretentiousness of the major venues limits their appeal. Like if somebody claps after the first movement then the other patrons look at them like they just ripped a titanic fart.

Meanwhile really great classical music in non-prestigious venues struggles to find any audience. Exciting music played on a Saturday afternoon for 10 people in a church basement.

I once got some free tickets to see Ryu Goto play at Carnegie Hall. These free tickets were absolutely at the back of the highest balcony. A few minutes after the show started somebody sat in the empty next to me at the end of the row. It was Midori Goto. It didn't occur to me to ask if she'd found her ticket on the floor because these seats were for "special people".