Comments on: Yet another quote from David Foster Wallace about Academic Prose that applies equally well to Academic Music http://www.willcwhite.com/2009/11/yet-another-quote/ Musician Sun, 22 Jan 2012 03:00:48 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.0.1 By: Eric L http://www.willcwhite.com/2009/11/yet-another-quote/comment-page-1/#comment-9920 Eric L Mon, 30 Nov 2009 06:06:58 +0000 http://www.willcwhite.com/?p=892#comment-9920 Hey William, I arrived here via your Sandow post. Curious as to what the clip is from? I actually don't think this is the most egregious example one can come up with. I kind of like it (but hard to really make a final judgment from a few seconds):) My least favorite (and absolute pet peeve) is music that flutters around directionless, with some lovely meandering flutter-tongue flute and gestures that seemingly come in and out for no reason. Or the ridiculous brass swells in orchestral music that everyone seems to loooove these days in their music. The brass chords in this at least have a sort of interesting rhythmic patter. This isn't remotely close to that bad. In any case, point taken. And I agree there's a tremendous amount of modernist crap out there posing as music. With that said, I'm not ready to disavow all modernist music. The lovely diatonic-ky chord that emerges out of the massed texture about 2-3 minutes into Ligeti's Atmospheres is cathartic for me...on the level of the best moments in Bach or Sigur Ros. I think there are lots of gems out there. And I think used correctly, certain modernist gestures can be extremely dramatic and emotional. But this is a longer discussion all together. Hey William, I arrived here via your Sandow post. Curious as to what the clip is from? I actually don’t think this is the most egregious example one can come up with. I kind of like it (but hard to really make a final judgment from a few seconds):) My least favorite (and absolute pet peeve) is music that flutters around directionless, with some lovely meandering flutter-tongue flute and gestures that seemingly come in and out for no reason. Or the ridiculous brass swells in orchestral music that everyone seems to loooove these days in their music. The brass chords in this at least have a sort of interesting rhythmic patter. This isn’t remotely close to that bad.

In any case, point taken. And I agree there’s a tremendous amount of modernist crap out there posing as music. With that said, I’m not ready to disavow all modernist music. The lovely diatonic-ky chord that emerges out of the massed texture about 2-3 minutes into Ligeti’s Atmospheres is cathartic for me…on the level of the best moments in Bach or Sigur Ros. I think there are lots of gems out there. And I think used correctly, certain modernist gestures can be extremely dramatic and emotional.

But this is a longer discussion all together.

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