But what the Beatles were doing was more like being as inventive as possible while still being fun to listen to for untrained people, a constraint that Bach shared.
I just don’t know enough about modernist composers to say, but I would give them more benefit of the doubt. It’s also noteworthy though that I know non-professionals who claim to enjoy them, which seems like very good Bayesian evidence that they are doing something significant.
I don’t think that your response on the opera question is really a satisfying rebuttal to my point.
But what the Beatles were doing was more like being as inventive as possible while still being fun to listen to for untrained people, a constraint that Bach shared.
Only as a result of the historically contingent fact that Bach’s wildest musical ideas happened to still be comprehensible to untrained people, because the inferential gulf wasn’t yet very large.
(Seriously, it’s not as if Bach secretly invented and wished he could write Schoenberg-style music, but reluctantly restrained himself because of his social obligations. What Bach produced—at least some of his output—was literally the most inventive music he could think of; and sometimes he was indeed criticized for going beyond the “norms” of the day.)
It’s also noteworthy though that I know non-professionals who claim to enjoy them, which seems like very good Bayesian evidence that they are doing something significant.
Yes. Though this is a point which unfortunately tends to get lost, there are indeed non-professionals who enjoy contemporary art music, and there are in fact “ways into” the music for them; things they can learn to enhance their enjoyment, even if they don’t quite reach the full level of appreciation that a professional might. And there are actually some folks who are musically gifted enough that they just “get it” right away, even though they don’t happen to be musicians.
I don’t think that your response on the opera question is really a satisfying rebuttal to my point.
I don’t know whether this will help either, but I did want to make the point that the most gifted composers tend not to want to spend their time writing in old styles, for the same reason that the most gifted mathematicians tend not to want to spend their time rediscovering old theorems. This is a better explanation for why we don’t see large quantities of Bach-quality Baroque-style music being churned out today than “lost knowledge” or historical genetic anomaly. (And why didn’t we see more of composers literally imitating Baroque music during the Classical and Romantic eras?)
But what the Beatles were doing was more like being as inventive as possible while still being fun to listen to for untrained people, a constraint that Bach shared.
I just don’t know enough about modernist composers to say, but I would give them more benefit of the doubt. It’s also noteworthy though that I know non-professionals who claim to enjoy them, which seems like very good Bayesian evidence that they are doing something significant.
I don’t think that your response on the opera question is really a satisfying rebuttal to my point.
Only as a result of the historically contingent fact that Bach’s wildest musical ideas happened to still be comprehensible to untrained people, because the inferential gulf wasn’t yet very large.
(Seriously, it’s not as if Bach secretly invented and wished he could write Schoenberg-style music, but reluctantly restrained himself because of his social obligations. What Bach produced—at least some of his output—was literally the most inventive music he could think of; and sometimes he was indeed criticized for going beyond the “norms” of the day.)
Yes. Though this is a point which unfortunately tends to get lost, there are indeed non-professionals who enjoy contemporary art music, and there are in fact “ways into” the music for them; things they can learn to enhance their enjoyment, even if they don’t quite reach the full level of appreciation that a professional might. And there are actually some folks who are musically gifted enough that they just “get it” right away, even though they don’t happen to be musicians.
I don’t know whether this will help either, but I did want to make the point that the most gifted composers tend not to want to spend their time writing in old styles, for the same reason that the most gifted mathematicians tend not to want to spend their time rediscovering old theorems. This is a better explanation for why we don’t see large quantities of Bach-quality Baroque-style music being churned out today than “lost knowledge” or historical genetic anomaly. (And why didn’t we see more of composers literally imitating Baroque music during the Classical and Romantic eras?)