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Feldman strikes me as a composer who has partly avoided and partly succumbed to the trap — all too common, as I see it — of deciding that the state of constant revolution that music has been in since about 1885 means that they can do anything they please and write music according to their own inscrutable (and often mechanical) system, shattering so many expectations so their music defies evaluation and nobody can tell them it isn't good. Wow, that is just so well put. As an (at best) amateur musician and listener, I've never been able to quite identify what bothers me about (some) "modern" music. I actually like a lot of it, but as you point out, some of it seems guided more by arbitrary formalism than by what actually sounds good. I'm sure this is opening an off-topic pandora's box, but the evolution of semi-mechanical compositional methods and (to me) seemingly arbitrary formalisms like 12-tone serialism strikes me as aping mathematics, science, or -- these days -- programming. Except with math, proofs have to, well, prove things; science is about empirical discovery; programs actually have to work. I guess my malaise with 20th century compositional formalisms stems from the fact that there's no similar constraint for the musical outcomes -- when confronted with bafflement or derision from the audience, the composer can simply shrug and say, "it works for me" Composers like Feldman (and, IMO Carter) seem to have used formal methods to produce some, at least, interesting and, at best, fascinating and beautiful work. And more intuitive 20th century composers like Charles Ives, Ned Rorem and Havergal Brian (to name three fascinating examples of many) really, to me, pushed the boundaries of beauty in music in seemingly less arbitrary ways. |