Howard the Duck

it's also almost every song I write

__________________


Malaise is THE dominant human predilection.

GuitarBizarre

Well as far as the academy are concerned, anything that isn't avant-garde, jazz, or classical, is 'popular music'. Rock music and pop music being not that far apart, and metal being essentially rock music, its not surprising they all follow the same basic structures a lot.

What is perhaps surprising is that very little popular music is through composed, (Composed with few or no returns to an identifiable section) at least, not outside of those forms predisposed to building and repetition as a musical device, like downtempo or ambient.

Edit: Also, to further address the formula comment above, most of those works were composed using forms because they were for formal occasions where listeners had very strict expectations of the format. When modernism, Wagner, Cage, and even Chopin in the romantic period, come around, the idea of rigid obedience to an expected structure, or even to an audience, was considered outmoded. After all, romanticism was often concerned with the idea of god working through man, rather than critical acclaim or similar. Modernism largely concerned itself with abandoning structure entirely, hence the early works from Schoenberg's atonal period like Pierrot Lunaire, which was entirely atonal and observed no structure, rythmic, melodic, or otherwise.

__________________

Howard the Duck

will check out that Schoenberg, i love atonal music

__________________


Malaise is THE dominant human predilection.

starrynight

Why would it be surprising? And all music has an audience with limited time. 'God working through man'???? You are saying that earlier composers like JS Bach weren't religious? To say modernism or post-modernism or whatever mainly just abandons structure is a big exaggeration. I won't comment on whatever courses you do as I don't think that gives you any more authority than many other people here.

__________________
non-cliquey member of every music forum I participate on

GuitarBizarre

1 - Your assertion regarding Bach is backwards. God working through an artist is not what Bach claimed of his work, he was a man praising god through his OWN work. This is an entirely different kettle of fish and matches up more markedly with the thinking of the time, compared to romantic thinking which implied the artist was a vessel for the work of god, or modernism, which sought to reject the use of past forms or ideas in favour of 'making it new', which subsequently led to the rejection of traditional diatonic tonality in favour of atonalisty and serialism, (Serialism being concieved as a method by which to remove traditional harmony's influence over note choice by treating all 12 notes of the western musical form as equal, without leading notes or tonic notes, no resolutions of any kind). Many composers also removed the traditional forms of structure as an extension of this, such as Cage, whose works make a point of HAVING structure, to the point of 4'33 making the point of music only requiring the opening and closing of the piano 3 times, in mock of the fact that you can REMOVE any element of music, up to and including notes and/or silence, but it still needs to be structured to exist, but 4'33 makes no claims as to requiring specific structures, and indeterminate works such as Terry Reily's "In C" depend on having a loose structure which cannot be nailed down to a specific result!

Then we can mention freeform jazz or improvisational styles which depend on no explicit structure at all to define them, indeed, usually their defining feature is a lack of specific structure to create a more natural movement between sections or parts. They are not easily reproduced before being recorded as a performance, but their structure can only be determined, in most cases, in retrospect, its barely considered during the compositional process itself, if at all!

2 - I never mentioned postmodernism, I mentioned modernism and romanticism. Post-modernism is a very, very, VERY different movement, predominant in popular culture to this day, even in the referential sense, such as Lady Gaga, whose image is pretty much Dadaist/surrealist, both of which are postmodern, rather than modernist, styles.

__________________

starrynight

I guess you are talking about the romantic hero worship of the individual artist, something that carries on to this day in a way. But why that has to be God working through an artist I don't know, particularly as there had already been philosophers and others questioning the existence of God anyway. And I suspect some earlier artists did think their skills had been given to them by God as they saw it. Romanticism is more about LOVE than God, and secular love at that. It's this that gets lifted up to some high ideal. And it got also mixed up with nationalism (due to the politics of the time)

__________________
non-cliquey member of every music forum I participate on

GuitarBizarre

No, thats not what romanticism was about at all. There are frequent tales of romantic period artists stuffing themselves to the gills with drugs in order to REMOVE their own influence from the work and allow god to guide them. THAT is what romanticism was about when it claimed to be god working through the artist.

This is getting tiring. Please, before you argue about romanticism, modernism, the intentions of an artist, or the nature of a work, I would implore you to educate yourself on the matters via a source more reputable and reliable source than assumption and hearsay. I am not stating what I am stating blind, I have been told this by university lecturers, read it in academic journals and researched it in books written by luminaries and professionals. I have spent a not inconsiderable portion of my life making sure I know what I'm talking about regarding these very topics, in and out of education proper. For all you claim that doesn't matter, my experience suggests that the opposite is in fact true.

__________________

starrynight

Ok GuitarBizarre we get the idea that you think you are right in everything. Romantic love is part of romanticism, Tristan and Isolde for example, the inspiration of love etc. Don't talk to me like I'm a fool and you are some kind of expert. Nature was another inspiration for the Romantics. And it was clearly more about secular emotions otherwise why wasn't there a huge outpouring of religious music like in the Renaissance (or Middle Ages) or Baroque? You see I know music.

__________________
non-cliquey member of every music forum I participate on

GuitarBizarre

Tristan und Isolde was dependent primarily on Wagner's concept of Gezamptkunstwerke (Total artwork, Wagner demanded absolute control over all elements of his operas, from music through to dancing to backdrops and even costume design), made extensive use of Idee fixe (the use of a particular amount of musical content, recontextualised repeatedly, to represent a given character or element in a work considered to be representative of events or story) and also, Wagner's use of nontonal harmony, including the self-explanatorily titled tristan chord, which is a half diminished 7th in second inversion, was noted for being an early, and surprisingly successful attempt, at shrugging off the percieved chains and limitations of the Germanic Harmonic tradition exemplified by Bach and Mozart. (Although there are still sections that fall back on established chord patterns typified by germanic harmony such as a perfect cadence of I IV V in the prelude, which is set up nontonally but resolves in the traditional manner, passing notes and chorale-esque movement included)

All of this was not necessarily by virtue of an adherence to any traditional structure. Indeed, any given "piece" of Wagner, such as Ride Of The Valkyries, is in fact a section of a larger work, often referred to as "Bleeding chunks of Wagner" as they were never intended to be removed from context. Any structure evident in a small piece of Wagner's work is illusory, likely not foreshawdowed in the larger portion of the work from which it comes, unless apportioned to idee fixe, or indeed, Strum und drang.

As for the outpouring of religious music, a religious inspiration doesn't necessarily imply that the work is made in order to worship god. And it doesn't follow that an ideology based on allowing god to work through you, using you as a vessel, would result in god praising or demanding worship for HIM/HER/ITSELF. The logic that implies religious works would have been the result of such a thought doesn't hold water.

__________________

Howard the Duck

i sorta get the notion it's the wrong sort of "romantic" starrynight is talking about

GB is talking about the Romantic period of classical music, not general romanticism

__________________


Malaise is THE dominant human predilection.