I’m actually not all that familiar with Lady McBeth, having only heard excerpts on occasion. My impression is that it’s one of his more adventurous pieces, but in general, Shostakovich is too conservative for me (for which he can’t entirely be blamed, since conservatism was imposed by the regime he lived under).
What do you think of Wozzeck? Lulu? (These are close enough to “canon” to count as such, from the point of view of music history and criticism. Particularly Wozzeck.) (Your answer here will probably determine whether anything more modern has a hope of satisfying you.)
I’ve seen Doctor Atomic, though only once. I doubt you’ll find it comparable to Figaro or The Ring, but I could be wrong.
Sorry for the delay, didn’t have a chance earlier. I just checked out Wozzeck.
My assessment--
The positives:
Decent pure instrumentals when no-one is singing. Locally there is clear and interesting musical structure at times. Not repetitive. Definitely music.
The negatives: No characters, no conflict, no interesting music for the first two scenes, no emotional range, no large scale structure, insipid cliche propaganda themes, intentionally ugly in every respect, repetitious, extremely boring and repetitious vocals.
My net assessment is that it was written by someone who knew how to compose, or at least how to compose interesting short snippets of symphonic music and plausibly short experimental songs but who had no idea at all of how to make an opera.
Yeah, so if you don’t like Wozzeck (probably the greatest opera of the 20th century), then it pretty much follows that you would think opera died in the 20th century.
My reaction to some of your negative points:
no large scale structure
This is demonstrably false, so I’ll have to interpret is as an assertion that you didn’t perceive any large scale structure. Which is possible, if this was your first hearing and you weren’t already acquainted with this kind of music (i.e. able to perceive large-scale structure in other works of the Second Viennese School).
It seems that you did perceive structure on the level of phrases, but not on the level of acts or the whole opera. What about intermediate levels, e.g. did you perceive structure on the level of scenes?
insipid cliche propaganda themes
This is arguably true now, after works like Wozzeck, etc., but it wasn’t true at the time it was written (WWI and aftermath), and it certainly wasn’t true at the time of Büchner’s original play a century earlier.
no interesting music for the first two scenes
I can see why you might say that about the first scene, if you’re new to this kind of music, but I’m surprised you would say it about the second scene, especially given that you did find interesting music elsewhere in the work. (I assume you must have liked Marie’s lullaby in the third scene, which is everybody’s favorite part.)
intentionally ugly in every respect
As a statement about the composer’s intentions, this is most assuredly wrong. (Just as our enemies don’t perceive themselves as evil, neither do artists we don’t like typically perceive themselves as creating ugly work.) I’m pretty familiar with Berg’s life and personality, and feel very confident in asserting that “intentionally ugly” is not at all how he would have described his own music.
repetitious
This seems to contradict “not repetitive” from the “positives” list, so you might want to elaborate. You seem to be referring more to vocal passages here, but these don’t contain more repetition (probably less) than the instrumental passages.
My net assessment is that it was written by someone who knew how to compose, or at least how to compose interesting short snippets of symphonic music and plausibly short experimental songs but who had no idea at all of how to make an opera.
Your disagreement with the musical establishment (and also with me personally) is quite severe in the case of this work and its composer, and so I would predict with reasonable confidence that your opinion is susceptible to updating upon further musical exposure.
Scene-level structure: I could see that the scenes were integrated pieces, and the endings were obviously appropriate endings for the sort of material that the scenes consisted of, but it seemed to me that in most cases one could have broken the scenes into 1-2 minute segments, choosing natural break points and adding transitions. You could then have shuffled the middle segments without detracting from the scenes.
The themes were obvious in 1925, but arguably not in 1914 when the opera began and definitely not in the 19th century. OTOH, I don’t think they were handled well at all.
Some artists (I’m thinking of Celine in particular) explicitly have said that they wanted to create ugly work. For that matter, some business-people I know do see themselves as ‘bad guys’, though they probably wouldn’t say ‘evil’.
Yep, complaint was about the vocals.
The point of the discussion was to figure out whether I could believe that the musical establishment is doing the same thing that earlier classical composers were doing. My impression is agnostic and remains agnostic. I’m sure that they are doing something technically difficult, and was already sure of that, but I’m just not convinced that its something worth while. The key question is essentially one of whether Beethoven or Wagner (or Gauss or Hilbert) would consider the history of music (or math) from their day forward to be interesting (and whether Beethoven etc would consider modern academic music more or less interesting than jazz, Indian classical, Pink Floyd, etc,)
I’m actually not all that familiar with Lady McBeth, having only heard excerpts on occasion. My impression is that it’s one of his more adventurous pieces, but in general, Shostakovich is too conservative for me (for which he can’t entirely be blamed, since conservatism was imposed by the regime he lived under).
What do you think of Wozzeck? Lulu? (These are close enough to “canon” to count as such, from the point of view of music history and criticism. Particularly Wozzeck.) (Your answer here will probably determine whether anything more modern has a hope of satisfying you.)
I’ve seen Doctor Atomic, though only once. I doubt you’ll find it comparable to Figaro or The Ring, but I could be wrong.
Sorry for the delay, didn’t have a chance earlier.
I just checked out Wozzeck.
My assessment--
The positives: Decent pure instrumentals when no-one is singing. Locally there is clear and interesting musical structure at times. Not repetitive. Definitely music.
The negatives:
No characters, no conflict, no interesting music for the first two scenes, no emotional range, no large scale structure, insipid cliche propaganda themes, intentionally ugly in every respect, repetitious, extremely boring and repetitious vocals.
My net assessment is that it was written by someone who knew how to compose, or at least how to compose interesting short snippets of symphonic music and plausibly short experimental songs but who had no idea at all of how to make an opera.
Yeah, so if you don’t like Wozzeck (probably the greatest opera of the 20th century), then it pretty much follows that you would think opera died in the 20th century.
My reaction to some of your negative points:
This is demonstrably false, so I’ll have to interpret is as an assertion that you didn’t perceive any large scale structure. Which is possible, if this was your first hearing and you weren’t already acquainted with this kind of music (i.e. able to perceive large-scale structure in other works of the Second Viennese School).
It seems that you did perceive structure on the level of phrases, but not on the level of acts or the whole opera. What about intermediate levels, e.g. did you perceive structure on the level of scenes?
This is arguably true now, after works like Wozzeck, etc., but it wasn’t true at the time it was written (WWI and aftermath), and it certainly wasn’t true at the time of Büchner’s original play a century earlier.
I can see why you might say that about the first scene, if you’re new to this kind of music, but I’m surprised you would say it about the second scene, especially given that you did find interesting music elsewhere in the work. (I assume you must have liked Marie’s lullaby in the third scene, which is everybody’s favorite part.)
As a statement about the composer’s intentions, this is most assuredly wrong. (Just as our enemies don’t perceive themselves as evil, neither do artists we don’t like typically perceive themselves as creating ugly work.) I’m pretty familiar with Berg’s life and personality, and feel very confident in asserting that “intentionally ugly” is not at all how he would have described his own music.
This seems to contradict “not repetitive” from the “positives” list, so you might want to elaborate. You seem to be referring more to vocal passages here, but these don’t contain more repetition (probably less) than the instrumental passages.
Your disagreement with the musical establishment (and also with me personally) is quite severe in the case of this work and its composer, and so I would predict with reasonable confidence that your opinion is susceptible to updating upon further musical exposure.
Scene-level structure: I could see that the scenes were integrated pieces, and the endings were obviously appropriate endings for the sort of material that the scenes consisted of, but it seemed to me that in most cases one could have broken the scenes into 1-2 minute segments, choosing natural break points and adding transitions. You could then have shuffled the middle segments without detracting from the scenes.
The themes were obvious in 1925, but arguably not in 1914 when the opera began and definitely not in the 19th century. OTOH, I don’t think they were handled well at all.
Some artists (I’m thinking of Celine in particular) explicitly have said that they wanted to create ugly work. For that matter, some business-people I know do see themselves as ‘bad guys’, though they probably wouldn’t say ‘evil’.
Yep, complaint was about the vocals.
The point of the discussion was to figure out whether I could believe that the musical establishment is doing the same thing that earlier classical composers were doing. My impression is agnostic and remains agnostic. I’m sure that they are doing something technically difficult, and was already sure of that, but I’m just not convinced that its something worth while. The key question is essentially one of whether Beethoven or Wagner (or Gauss or Hilbert) would consider the history of music (or math) from their day forward to be interesting (and whether Beethoven etc would consider modern academic music more or less interesting than jazz, Indian classical, Pink Floyd, etc,)