Is dissonance bad?

[fmr]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-iVYu5lyX5M

Or this?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wbLcI9- ... bLcI9-Js0U

Thank you, I now know what it's like to be ear raped!

Like everything, hearing to modern and/or contemporary art music is something that requires previous preparation and acquired listening habits. If your understanding and listening habits of art music stops at Beethoven or Chopin, then you will not be ready to listen to this, and you will feel... well, raped, as you say (although I dislike the comparison).

You have to walk along the path that goes from Beethoven to Brahms and Shubert, then Liszt (not the piano works, but the orchestral works) and Wagner, then Bruckner and Mahler, then Schoenberg and his disciples of the second Vienna School, as well as Debussy and Ravel, then Bartok and Stravinsky, then Messiaen, then the post war composers like Boulez, Stockhausen and Ligeti.

Of course, if you stopped at jazz and hip-hop, then you will never understand what this is about.

[fmr]

My dog hates Penderecki, Ligeti and so on... I guess the animals don't like modern music

I guess/hope there is a difference between your dog perception of music and your own.

[Aleatoriac]

No - dissonance is AWESOME.

Yes that's an opinion. I cannot tell you why I like it, but I can tell you how!

Major 7 (root and major 7th only) and minor 2nd (root and minor 2nd only) are my FAVORITE SOUNDS EVER. Especially on distorted electric guitar. With lots of delay and reverb. And more reverb.

Okay except the full major 7 chord. That's my favorite.

Okay except the tritone, that's my favorite.

Except...

[jancivil]

Or this?

/Ligeti organ music dissonant cluster-filled goodness

Thank you, I now know what it's like to be ear raped!

You have to walk along the path that goes from Beethoven to Brahms and Shubert, then Liszt (not the piano works, but the orchestral works) and Wagner, then Bruckner and Mahler, then Schoenberg and his disciples of the second Vienna School, as well as Debussy and Ravel, then Bartok and Stravinsky, then Messiaen, then the post war composers like Boulez, Stockhausen and Ligeti.

Me, I gravitated to Schönberg readily without being all that steeped in Beethoven, Brahms, et al. I got some Wagner through '2nd year harmony', I'd verily dug some Chopin but I didn't grow up in 'classical music', there were zero records of it I can recall even in the house. Debussy and Ravel spoke to me right away.

Of course, if you stopped at jazz [...]

Your digs at jazz are obnoxious and foolish, finally.

The record containing this music was in the credenza at home:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0_tvMm1eIzY

[jancivil]

^ released 1952 iirc

then there's

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EstPgi4eMe4

[nordickvr]

Of course, if you stopped at jazz and hip-hop, then you will never understand what this is about.

This is pretty weird to read that.

[stilluntitled]

As some philosophers, mostly phenomenologists, were kind to tell us, music is something transcending the here-and-now - there is a perception of a flow - and while listening to a given moment, it always has some relation to the moment before (and even many of them, some people are able to perceive all the composition, I cannot) and the moment after - there is an expectation present.

Therefore, it all depends on what kind of ambient and what expectations you will create with harmonies and when are you goin to disrupt it and with what.

[fmr]

Your digs at jazz are obnoxious and foolish, finally.

The record containing this music was in the credenza at home:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0_tvMm1eIzY

I liked this piece... very much. Thank you

However, I failed to see in what way does this relate to jazz (at least the jazz I am constantly being confronted with around here). Sure, the ensemble has some not standard instruments, like the drums, and the electric guitar, which I guess have their place in a Big Band, but not usually in a classical ensemble, but that doesn't make the piece a jazz piece.

Anyway, it is a very interesting piece.

[jancivil]

It was written for Stan Kenton's orchestra, which was a jazz group and contained a cover of Everything Happens to Me, a super popular tune for some time.
You aren't in jazz and seem to have an aversion to it, so whether or not you recognize that this_is_jazz is of no moment to jazz music. The only records in our credenza were jazz records up to a point where my mother felt I should know basically about Nat King Cole's pop records and a few things from the WWII era, Andrews Sisters et al and she bought compilations.

So, when I show you something from my household which was steeped in jazz as an example of jazz that exceeds your view of it, the trick is to tell me it isn't jazz? So we'll go around in circles.
Another thing which puzzles me is that you really embrace prog rock but you love to tell us how jazz didn't reinvent the wheel, it's all there in classical. Well, it isn't, that's your opinion out of an insufficient sampling.

Anyway, there is a clear strong swing time here, not a fake one, means it's jazz. This piece does not happen outside of jazz. Cecil Taylor, Anthony Braxton, jazz. However Stravinsky's compos for Woody Herman's Herd are not jazz.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IzeK0Ahh0wY
the strings gesture shortly after 'I've mortgaged all my castles in the air' still kills me.

[woggle]

Your digs at jazz are obnoxious and foolish, finally.

The record containing this music was in the credenza at home:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0_tvMm1eIzY

I liked this piece... very much. Thank you

However, I failed to see in what way does this relate to jazz (at least the jazz I am constantly being confronted with around here). Sure, the ensemble has some not standard instruments, like the drums, and the electric guitar, which I guess have their place in a Big Band, but not usually in a classical ensemble, but that doesn't make the piece a jazz piece.

Anyway, it is a very interesting piece.

totally sounds like jazz to me - really surprised you can't hear that. Obviously it doesn't sound like a lot of other jazz (and they don't sound like it - same same for music from the classical tradition), but the jazz tradition is in there pretty strong.

[woggle]

just to update some of the references to the classical tradition and include people who aren't old enough to be one of my (long deceased) grandparents - particularly the singing which starts at about 30 secs. This piece is great live, Deborah Kayser is a wonderful singer with an incredible repertoire and technical span

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DvnAwCcDl6U

[jancivil]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6i2fdD_tLGw

[jancivil]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qkzys3bjHq4

[nathanj]

It's bad for my digestion. I get sick if i eat while there is very dissonant music playing.

[StudioDave]

...then there's...

Cecil !!!

I saw him play two sets at Gilly's in Dayton OH, many many moons ago, and it was unforgettable. Two sets, each lasting ~45 minutes, each comprised of one "tune" per set. He had Jimmy Lyons and Andrew Cyrille with him, they were all amazing players.

IIRC there were maybe eleven people in the club but Cecil played like it was Carnegie Hall. We were rapt, a bunch of white kids from Ohio totally into what he was doing. If you've seen him you know what those hands are like. I have the impression that he'd out-Bartok Bartok in a play-off.

Years later I had the pleasure of hearing and meeting Buell Neidlinger at McCabe's in Los Angeles. On stage he had mentioned something about the dismal state of music in the US, specifically referring to Cecil Taylor's situation. After the show I asked him about those remarks. He said Cecil gets as much as $30,000 per gig in Japan, and the man can't get anything close to that here. Buell might have been exaggerating but I understand that Taylor's popularity in Japan is very great.

Wrt: the topic: Well,Cecil certainly qualifies. I'd recommend the Blue Note stuff for starters, Unit Structures and Conquistador are still huge favorites here.

Incidentally, someone in this thread suggested a "path" into the music of Schoenberg et al. Mine had little to do with that suggestion (though I think it is a good one), I was into bands like the Velvet Underground and The Mothers Of Invention, and I'd already got into Coltrane and Ornette, so I wasn't unduly aggrieved by the amount of "dissonance" I heard in Stravinsky, Bartok, Schoenberg, and the rest. I was attracted to the new sound worlds those composers had imagined and realized. In fact, if someone asks me why or how I can listen to "that music", I tell them that I simply like the sounds.

Best,

dp