*Show notes:* 0:27 The support of patron *Alice Wyan* _doubled_ the weight of this request! If you want to speed up the process of making certain videos, consider becoming a patron for as little as $2/month. 15:28 Ferneyhough’s “filtering” procedures date back to his 1967 wind sextet _Prometheus,_ another indication of how well-formed his language was, even as a young composer. 28:02 Composers typically use lots of extended techniques in a score, or avoid them altogether, as their occasional inclusion usually sounds “off.” 29:45 Conlon NANcarrow, technically … which means that everyone I’ve ever heard say it in real life has been wrong. 31:43 While Tchaikovsky’s true end will likely never be known, Finnissy believes that news of Tchaikovsky’s sexuality was about to hit the St. Petersburg press, hence the plot of _Shameful Vice._ 34:32 Not to be confused with the _album_ from whence the piece came, also called _City of Glass._ 36:13: The timeline is a little confusing here; _helical_ is listed in various places as a 1975, 1976, 1978, and 1993 composition. I believe that this reflects the various iterations of the score over the years. Dench’s official Web site (link in the sources in the video description) has the date at 1975.
Out of all the many episodes you have produced this is my favourite Thomas. Your grasp of the combined aesthetics and techniques used of these more modern composers is excellent because you have context reaching back centuries through western music composition. This point of reference adds such depth and clarity, not to mention "context" to this very significant episode. It inspires deep internal pondering about where classical music needs to move toward in order to survive. Wherever that place is I hope it makes one as an appreciator feel as much as think. Bravo Thomas!
“Sometimes musicians will re-notate Ferneyhough's scores to be more playable. Ferneyhough doesn't like this. This makes Ferneyhough mad. You won't like Ferneyhough when he's mad.”
Being unplayable, or hardly playable, is part of Ferneyhough's aesthetics: the immense effort and neurotic stress that goes with the attempts at performance, is the type of 'expression' that F wants. Of course that is a sign of serious neurosis, being transferred to the players and from there, to the audience.
To paraphrase, I believe it was Gardner Read, "the composer who vaguely notates the possible, or meticulously notates the impossible, then avers that the agonized approximation produced by the performers is exactly what he intended, is guilty of unconscionable sham." :)
The musical irony being that the more complex the musical notation or instructions, the less the performer will be able to have fidelity to them in a concert situation.
Yeah that's not ironic, that's the point of ferneyhough's obsessive notation. He essentially gives the performers the choice of what elements to emphasise because it's impossible to play all of them.
I had a really brief interchange with Chris Dench once and i can say he is a lovely soul. The stratification of meaning in his charts is something that is beyond remarkable. It's the Kabbalah of music making.
He certainly seems to be the least up his own backside, his website shows he has a great love of ALL kinds of music far removed from the typical Adornoite dismissal of everything south of Boulez/Carter that seems to pervade the rest of the school.
I think it gets misguided when novelty is sanctified. At the end of the day, it's a relative property, depending on what you already know. The best music, to me, does not rely on being original, though it might be original incidentally.
Would be great if you also make a guide about reductionist composers and the Wandelweiser movement, a self-organized offshoot of the New York school (John Cage, Morton Feldman) with occasional dashes of everything from Satie to phonography (field recordings) - a low-key alternative to both post-serial/spectral academia and pop minimalism. They are featured proeminently in Jennie Gottschalk's book "Experimental Music Since 1970", but other than that they don't have much institutional power and most of their sparse music is an acquired taste, so despite being active for almost three decades and are regularly being performed and recorded to some critical acclaim (and, in the case of Michael Pisaro-Liu, even a modest popularity), they are still rarely talked about on most discussion forums dedicated to contemporary classical music. I can see why: while retaining an avant-garde edge (sometimes enough to be suspected of hoaxing), at least some compositions have sensuous appeal to listeners (at least it does to me, though I guess I can thank ASD for that), yet they generally tend to be more conceptual (in any case, they like phenomenology) than focused on technicality, and collaborate more often with improvisers or electronic musicians. New Complexity is being fetishized to this date by many in the small crowd of contemporary classical composers and listeners because it appears as the ultimate embodiment of modernist complexity that deserves funding, whereas Wandelweiser ambitions are a little more scalable for the era of downshifting...
I've always looked up to composers like these (especially Ferneyhough, Dench and Finnissy). Their music is sadly very underrated. You did a really good job on the vid! Thank you. If I could make a request, maybe another American composer? (Maybe someone like Frederic Rzewski or John Corigliano?)
Incredible work, best of it's kind on youtube! I've learned about new complexity in my musicology classes, but I've learned a lot of new things from this video.
Greetings Thomas, Great work you are doing! I would just like to request that you please consider doing a video on living Latvian composer Peteris Vasks. A truly underrated gem of our time, IMO... I know you have a lot of requests, but I just wanted to add yet another penny to your bucket full of pennies ;) Thank you!
Best bus ride video ive ever listened to and watched Wonderful introductory material to a world that used to be so foreign but now seems obvious. Thank you! Also: Neeeeerrrrd :p
Excellent work! I had been hoping for a NC essay at some point and this really helped scratch that itch. I can absolutely understand why this type of music isn't up even most people's alleys, but it unfortunately seems there's a lot of open hate not just for NC music, but even people who do enjoy this type of stuff. It seems like you're either either a snooty academic or some idiot who knows nothing about music composition in order to enjoy the likes of these composers. Like damn, I just think this stuff sounds cool, lay off for a bit. The second and third Ferneyhough string quartets and La Terre Est un Homme are irreplaceable in my realm of listening material. If I get the opportunity to so much as have a disastrous read-through session of one of his works for string quartet I will die a happy man.
When you have spent three years studying composition having the disciples of these people essentially deride you as a regressive neanderthal for not seeing the point of writing impossible to play music while name dropping concepts you think make you sound more intellectual than you actually are, then perhaps you will understand a little better.
@@grantco2 Why? Why show such visceral dislike to a kind of music when it literally does not affect you in any way, if you don't like it, just don't listen to it, simple as that.
When the number of words used to describe a piece exceeds the number of notes in that piece the world has gone topsy-turvy. When I was at conservatory, I noticed the musicologists had very little interest in music and great interest in systems.
Absolutely couldn’t agree more. I’m a lowly jazz musician who’s been dragged into the rabbit hole of new complexity by a friend of mine and among the first things he did was hand me a book explaining this music. This music really doesn’t sound or feel very good at all it feels like this is an ego-driven pursuit rather than a musical one
Mi profesor de composición estudió con Ferneyhough y él le comentaba que unos alumnos habían creado un software para hacer que sus obras estuvieran escritas de una forma más fácil, él inmediatamente sacó una versión qué el había escrito antes y coincidía con la que el software había escrito, una idea de la nueva complejidad en el Reino Unido era forzar a estudiar a los intérpretes ya que el nivel interpretativo era muy alto y esto hacía que los instrumentistas no estudiaran sus partes y siempre leyeran todo a primera vista, con esta complejidad en la escritura se fuerza a estudiar y descifrar toda obra. Hace poco analizamos Bone Alphabeth y todos sabemos lo compleja que es, un hito para graduarse en el solfeo Ritmic.
Brilliant job describing this "music". These scores look like engineering schematics. For the amount of writing on the page very little is happening with the cello in the example. complex score mechanics and notation, but the musical itself is not sonically all that complex, which would be fine if it was musically interesting and satisfying. I think it is overly intellectualized art...there is a line in conceptual art that gets crossed and it is just complexity that doesn't communicate much but the intellectual process that designed it...this is front and center...what music does for us is forgotten... 19:40 to 19:52. What his aims are for his piece. A lot of jargon and complex sounding but based on the sounds produced, couldn't those sounds have been produced without the schematics? Great overview. PS. I love Ives, but Ives does sound like music.
It is a great shame that the sonic interest and emotional communicativeness of this "music" (if I may borrow your excellent scare-quotes) seem to be in exactly inverse proportion to the amount of cerebration and intellectual effort expended on these scores by the "composers" (those quotes again!) and their hapless interpreters. That said, incoherence can seem extraordinarily like "complexity", and vice versa. Tonal music of the Common Practice period (and beyond) has an audible syntax, even to the habituated but untrained listener; this "music", by contrast, depends on programme notes (and other technical exegesis) to explain the sounds that cannot explain themselves in action.
"A lot of jargon and complex sounding"- - -this strikes me as a bit generalised. I thought Finnissy's String Trio is pretty communicative, to my ears atleast. Likewise, the maelstrom of Ferneyhough's orchestral piece 'La Terre et un Homme" has a searing intensity.
@@MorganHayes_Composer.Pianist I will have to give them a listen. I always feel with the very experimental composers that there are always some works that stand out as successful. But a steady diet of it is like making a diet of hemp rope because it's high in fiber. There's better and more appetizing ways of doing it. The way these composers describe their work is similar to the way post modern writers talk about their fiction. They ascribe all kinds of complex intentions and concepts to it and what people really want in stories is strong characters, some human emotion. I think people want that in their music too. I don't remember which one of the 5 composers reviewed was disappointed and surprised his music didn't catch on with a wider audience. Really? What did he think was going to happen when people heard his tuneless skitterings? The same thing Schoenberg thought about 12 tone music--the public would get used to it, but they did by and large. Despite the brave experiments, the vast ingenuity and even the astonishing successes of composers like Schnittke, Penderecki and Ligeti, composer of the 21st century are going to have to face the music and compose again. Audiences are craving a little less mechanical and a lot more human.
There is more to music than sound. There's movement, energy, performativity, interpretation, etc. These are precisely the things these composers were exploring in their use of notation.
@@mm-dn6oe Not really, the scores are about nailing a performer down so that every breath they take has to be justified. About writing stuff you know to be impossible to play but deriving a sadistic delight in watching performers attempt to jump through your hoops. Taking six months to "learn" a score is a hell of a big demand to place on a professional soloist.Particularly when things like the selective use of aleatoric techniques could achieve pretty much the same sonic effects and cut that time by 3/4s.
You have done a fanrastuc I wonder if some day someone will do a follow up to my book Primacy of the ear for most of you ,it’ll be too elementary How can educators inspire students to seek out to new directions in all music from Aretha to post Messiaen.and use class time to focus ,enjoy non diatonic sound Gunther Schuller ,george Russell have discussed this for years You put an amazing amount of time and skill to this fine video. We all thank you
• Ferneyhough's _Cassandra's Dream Song_ is easily his most approachable, especially in a live setting. The flute constrains him from doing _too_ much at one time. • Finnissy has some nice moments of relative stasis in parts of the _English Country-Tunes_ and the _Gershwin Arrangements._ I prefer his orchestral music, like _Red Earth._ • Dench's _ik(s)land[s]_ is really gorgeous, and his Piano Sonata is probably the best example of his work in large scale. I'm also fond of his guitar work _severance_ I excerpted here. • Barrett's work with FURT and various iterations of his _codex_ series are worth knowing. Since he's so aligned with improvisation, listening to as many versions as you can find is rewarding. • Dillon is my favorite of the bunch, and he's at his best when he's ethereal and impressionistic. I find his piano music hit-or-miss, but when it's a hit, it's by far my favorite of these composers. I especially love _echo the angelus_ (excerpted here) as well as many moments in _The Book of Elements,_ such as the beginning of Volume IV. Some truly amazing sonorities populate _Pharmakeia_ and his _Stabat Mater Dolorosa._
I would just like briefly to say thank you Classical Nerd for making this video, although I would also have to say that putting these four people together, under the heading of some supposedly shared "style", tends to draw the attention away from the (more important IMO) individuality of their work. Also the use of the "NC" term (I can't bring myself to type it out in full!) draws attention to the way the music is notated, as opposed to the way it sounds and expresses itself, which is another way of saying the same thing, I mean nothing can substitute for the listening experience, and every composition is a new world to explore. To speak for myself: having spent my teenage years learning about music principally through broadcasts and recordings (no RU-vid then of course), nobody ever told me there was such a thing as difficult or inaccessible music, and all these years later I still don't really believe there's such a thing. Maybe this music suggests a level of engagement with sound, structure, ideas and so on that some listeners aren't prepared to give it, in which case I would say to some of the dismissive commentators here: why bother complaining that a creative musician hasn't provided you with the entertainment you want?
"The score/music is fine, the plebs are just too ignorant to understand it." Fairly typical response. If composers wish to spend their time essentially attempting to acoustically re-represent the sounds of 1960s sound labs that is their affair and they have plenty of techniques with which to generate such sonic effects including aleatoric ones. However, to deliberatly set out to fool an audience/listener by letting them think that what the player is playing is what is exactly as written when the latter is deliberatly placed out of the technical bounds of the instrument in question is pure charlatanism. There is meaningful complexity (like Ives, Stockhausen and Zappa) where the complex elements serve an expressive function and there is just complexity for complexities sake. Composers who have wilfully opted out of wishing to engage with both players and audience in a direct way and who seek to hide between sonic and verbal persiflage cannot complain when they get negative feedback. It is not the audiences responsibility if a composer freely chooses to use the most complex means in order to express nothing coherent or meaningful. To pretend that such behaviour constitutes a form of aesthetic significance rather than empty gesturism is also rather cynical.
I have nowhere, here or elsewhere, said or implied that anyone is "too ignorant to understand" the music I'm involved in making. Your insinuation that composers like those discussed in the video have devoted their entire lives to fooling audiences and listeners says a great deal more about you, your lack of respect for your fellow human beings, and indeed your own deep cynicism, than it does about anything else. Most people have better things to do than to poke around on RU-vid slagging off music that offends their overweening sense of being right. Shame on you.
@@richardbarrett2760 Oh come along now, when the Arditti Quartet are obliged to take hours re-composing a string quartet to make it even remotely playable within an ensemble context, and when simple quasi-melodic vocal lines are seemingly (and pointlessly) subdivided and written in a way that would make the opening phrase of "Three Blind Mice" stretch to thirty pages there is definitely a game being played on those performers isn't there? It's almost as if one has a computerised app you feed simple material into and then choose the most impractical and remote version of that phrase it generates. To be fair I do have several of your CDs because I am interested in the aesthetic side of it, it is the posturing, preening attitude tied in with the pretence that producing overwritten gibberish without respect for the poor performers who have to learn a whole new syntax before even being allowed to glimpse the title page is somehow progressive that I have issues with. I recall, when I was a student, there was a chance to have a workshop with John Adams which I jumped at while the people who went around dropping your name (alongside two of the others mentioned here) merely sneered and made fun of the whole idea. I then attended a workshop given by one of the composers mentioned here where he declared Stockhausen used to be alright but retreated into using primary school mathematics. I was not that impressed having recently discovered "Lucifer's Farewell" which I'm sure we can agree is an absolute masterpiece. I tend to think respect is a two way street by the way. I see very little emanating from your (collective) side of the fence . However as long as you continue to bring out CDs I will continue to buy them.
@@egapnala65 You want respect? Then don't come out with insulting nonsense like "there is a game being played on those performers" and "overwritten gibberish".
@@richardbarrett2760 I am entitled to my opinions on the matter as you are yours. To me a lot of the notation is overwritten gibberish which could be written in other ways incorporating aleatoric means perhaps. In the end its self defeating as nobody who depends on music performance for a living is going to be able to afford the time and patience to translate and render playable whatever insanely impractical irrational playing values are put before them. As for respect i am secure in myself enough not to go around begging for such things. PS Recently got hold of your "Vanity" alongside some Bryn Harrison (who I really like) havent got round to listening to it yet but I will,
I am always rather amused to hear this group of composers described as "left wing" as their entire schtick is wilful elitism and when I was a composition student their disciples used to strut around like ubermenschen declaring we all writing nursery rhymes. I remember attending a workshop given by Dillon and he was going on about "the essential Hegelianism of Germanic culture in that it produced Beethoven and Hitler". I pointed out that was not specific to Germanic culture and mentioned Russia and Italy. He replied sneeringly "Oh yeah, Tchaikovsky. Forgot about him." To me their entire schtick is wilful abnegation of compositional responsibility, a desire to not want to communicate with what they see as inferior beings, its all about writing triads for oboes and letting the performer work it out for themselves. I seem to recall Dench has had something of a rethink of whether this style of composing is really as worthwhile as it seems and has simplified his style and Dillon does seem to have mellowed with age. I still go out and buy their music as I think its valid but it is with the awareness that what I am listening to is more to do with the performer bullshitting than the supposed genius of the composers involved.
It’s like me, being an oboist in a “bad opera” performance, thus sharing a bottle of wine with the flutist, during the performance at Casa Italiana on North Broadway downtown Los Angeles. “What does it matter... shattered shattered... sha doobee” Mick Jagger
The genuine communist far-left is not elitist per se but it’s certainly not “anti-elitist” - that is, it’s not populist. Difficulty isn’t good in itself, that would be silly; but when difficulty is merited, it only insults proletarians to dumb material down for their sake. It’s the attitude of a politician or a nonprofit manager - “catering to the masses.” Our goal as communists is to destroy the social separation between “elites” and “masses” in the first place.
Please do a video on Rued Langgaard, Florent Schmitt, Ottorino Respighi, Erich Wolfgang Korngold, Henryk Gorecki, Benjamin Britten and Feruccio Busoni.
I only take five requests per person, just because I have so dang many of them active. Langgard, Schmitt, Respighi, Korngold, and Gorecki have been boosted at lentovivace.com/classicalnerd.html
The moment humans begin coordinating sound within the framework of a linear event, we have music. Anything outside of that is uncontrolled and random sound. That is not “music” as it takes no effort of coordination. I.G. Traffic, conversations, object interactions, etc. Sound can be pitched or non-pitched. Time can adhere to a strict pulse or not. The physics of sound as used within the “diatonic“ approach has its reasons based on agreements of qualities of intervals. This is a relativistic way of looking at vibrations. And then there are ways of organizing those vibrations outside of the diatonic agreements. In this approach we are generally dealing with smaller divisions of intervals and harmonic partials. Or as in the case of serial music, adhering to the diatonic system of intervals, but not using the same rules about how they relate in terms of gravitational pull towards one another. This could be considered more of a quantum approach. As for the element of time for which we coordinate these vibrations within, we can have strict pulse which can be chopped up in a variety of ways and then we have legato. And there ladies and gentlemen is your entire pallet for the world of “music “. It can be mixed and matched and turned into all manner of “schools“. At the end of the day it’s organizing vibration in time. There is no such thing as musical “schools“. There are only preferences of the vibrational / temporal palate.
I'm sorry, it's more interesting to you talk about these composers than listen to the music itself. Maybe I've gotten old but in my youth, I listened to "avant-garde" music and I also was able to listen to the painfully screaming "new jazz" of the time. Now, sigh, life seems too short. That being said, I've discovered Densch here, I must say that the word nerd in your case, doesn't quite do you justice.
I wonder if there's a relationship between Autisms and these composers? Rhythm and melody take a backseat to sound textures, tambres and dynamics. Where's Erik Satie when you need him? I love your insights. Keep up the good work.
Thank you for doing this very informative video, I enjoyed it. Your video interests me more than the music you describe. And, in a way, that’s a shame.
No, for three reasons: 1) The impulses in the American context were pretty different from the British postwar culture that spawned New Complexity. 2) Zappa had the _sound_ of the finished piece as the goal, not as a byproduct of trying to challenge his performers, which brings me to ... 3) Zappa's approach to his performers takes a more Milton Babbitt-esque stance as _vehicles_ for maximum precision. This was the impulse for their common interest in synthesis, although Zappa was slightly more concerned with timbre as well, since he was writing for a commercial audience.
Let me say that I enjoy quite a bit of the music written by these composers (some more than others, and certainly not all of the music). Undoubtedly, these gentlemen are very bright and skilled, each possessing, I would imagine, a great set of ears. That said, I do not believe that they are hearing all of this music, nor do I believe that they can accurately articulate, sing, tap the rhythms in their music - not with layers of microtones and layers of nested (and often overlapping nested) tuplets. There are some super-human pianists and percussionists who perform this, and other complex, music. But I do believe that there are limits. From time to time I reread an essay Gunther Schuller wrote in 1963(!) about rhythmic complexity - rather prescient.
@@RanBlakePiano unsure of your point. Some people have more ability/talent than others when it comes to matters of hearing and articulating difficult/complex music. I witnessed Carter pick out a wrong note in the second violins at a rehearsal of one of his orchestra pieces (the piano concerto, I believe) - we were all amazed. That said, I firmly believe that their are limits as to what the human brain can accurately perceive and what can be accurately articulated. (I still have my doubts about the opening bars of the Carter 3rd Quartet, as thrilling as that is.). I believe that the music of New Complexity greatly exceeds those limits. By the way, I am a great admirer of G Schuller’s music and I greatly enjoyed your music and performance when I lived in Boston in the mid-70s.
This content would be better as a written essay. I kept waiting to hear audio samples of the music you’re talking about. I guess the way it sounds is beside the point? Intellectual complexity and association with other “high culture” is all that matters? Who cares if you listen to it?
I mean ... I _do_ provide excerpts of the most exemplary pieces, so I'm not sure you actually watched it. If your criticism is missing a key "more" somewhere along the way, please bear in mind that I can't provide a clip of _every_ piece; not only would that make the video somewhere in the 3-hour range, but so many of these pieces are under copyright and RU-vid doesn't understand fair use very well.
@@ClassicalNerd ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-l8mgJi-CWiw.html this is from Mario Lavista (RIP 2021) ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-JFCfGOQM3kU.html this is a live performance from Ortiz Work, hope you enjoy it!
I studied a lot of this when I was a student many years ago. Then, as now, it is a fascinating discussion to have, and philosophy to explore, but I just can't enjoy the music in any conventional sense.
Rationalisation of mental/philosophical complexity doesn't always produce 'attractive' music. Nevertheless, we all have our own cultivated/uncultivated idea of what that is, BUT this is not the same as the oft quoted nonsense that "beauty is in the eyes of the beholder'.
A very minor point I, for some overly pedantic reason, had to write here."Ballarat" (under the Dench sub-section) is pronounced not as you said it but with the "a" between the B and the L said as in word "apple". It's a very attractive regional city which mostly still retains it's 19th century style and Australian gold rush era opulence. It has about 110,000 people.and is approximately 110km north-west of Melbourne. I fully understand why they moved there and might move there myself one day!
The worst thing that happened in the history of music is the so-called "new complexity." And those who claim to be composers and all the nonsense that is written in music is of the same type as this nonsense, which has no meaning or human feeling!
This was back when Leftism was a coffee house intellectual pontificating about Theodor Adorno, not some CNN-addicted cat-mom shrieking about tHe iNsUrReCtIoN!!!
@@DeflatingAtheism Now-a-days Leftism in the US is defined as not being a Trump supporter (and it's the RW media that's generally doing the defining). You may not be a Trump supporter (most won't self identify as such anyway) but your comment generally illustrates my point. JMHO
@@yogavnture1 This is going to be a little tricky, but move your cursor up to the search bar at the top of the page. Click on it and type the word "music". You will find all kinds of neat music out there in RU-vid land. And if for some reason you come across a video with someone talking in it, just repeat the process and keep scrolling. You can do it, yogi. You can do it.
*Art music composition came to an end around 1990* - since then there is almost nothing that can be experienced as music, whether with high complexity or not. And yes, I'm qualified and a serious listener familiar with works by all the major names mentioned. And, my friend, your audience doesn't need to see you narcissistically- it'd be great to have images only...
I show things when there is something to show. If that's "narcissism" to you, every RU-vid video essayist I can think of will be out of the bounds of your enjoyment. (I doubt you would hold a university lecturer to such a standard.)
@@ClassicalNerd I do appreciate your work- some great videos. I'm British and haven't entirely made sense of the American desire to have their face dominating the camera- I can see you're an interesting mind but I don't really care much what you look like. So why...? I also make videos... Good point about university lecturing too- all rooms now have a computer and projected screen and indeed there is no excuse not to be using slides continuously. Setting what the lecturer has against slides also keeps them on track- the slides remind them what to say but also when to say it, giving the structure. Hope you keep up the good work but note that art music is a purely historical matter now- all the major areas of expression are exhausted and the new complexity is totally meaningless paper music, nothing to do with normal aesthetic experience whatsoever. The only work to be done is performers recording ever deeper strata of material...
@@ClassicalNerd Well I can agree to disagree. Almost nothing has been said worth saying in music for three decades and it's not going to be reversed- tonality as music's basic resource is exhausted and academic music is just that. Art music has long since been overcome by fatuous white noise just as much as popular culture. Minimalism was music's last important statement- perhaps Nyman's _Noises sounds sweet airs_ of 1992 plus just a few later minor landmarks. I'm familiar with music by 1320 composers from all periods including all the core repertory and most great recordings- I'm 52. Take care...
I felt I learned some things from this, but: Your video on Stravinsky is so marred by factual inaccuracies and dismissive tales told while missing the foundations of his style development and his influence on composers during his lifetime, from Milhaud to Bernstein, Boulez to Carter, that it makes me wonder if anything on your channel is any more accurate. Also, if you are trying to be a musical stand-up comedian with clever one-liners, try reading the Stravinsky-Craft Expositions and Developments. Read Antheil's Bad Boy of Music (autobiography) to learn the struggle of composers attempting to find their own voice against the influence of Stravinsky. Even if you want to make a case against Stravinsky, you need to re do that one.
1) Of _course_ a nine-minute video on Stravinsky is going to miss a lot-it kind of has to! When I started this channel, I was an undergrad who wanted to provide short, frequent episodes because I was enthusiastic about the material. As I've matured, I've shifted to far more comprehensive and well-cited videos with as many examples and graphics I can get away with-which I can do now that I'm a PhD student who releases one or two videos per month. I actually keep track of the length of my videos in a handy chart, which I've labeled here for convenience: lentovivace.com/EpisodeLengthChart.png 2) I've made videos on Milhaud, Bernstein, Boulez, and Carter that I'm very proud of. Surely you can evaluate those on their own terms, separate from a very old video that's far removed from that style/set/level of depth? 3) I started listing my sources (instead of foolishly deleting them) around early 2019, when my subscriber base first started to tick up. It's one of the many things I've learned over the six+ years I've run this channel. 4) How would reading one of Robert Craft's other books (not the one I have on my shelf, mind you!) help me be a "musical stand-up comedian?" This is an educational channel with the occasional comedic aside. 5) As it happens, I've remade three videos that I felt were not up to snuff, and I'm trying to balance that out with my own projects and the frankly insane number of requests I get for completely new subjects, which may be found at lentovivace.com/classicalnerd.html
Thank you for your detailed reply. I simply hope that you will do a new take on that topic with your more finely honed skills. I'm curious if you're watched "The Unanswered Question" Norton Lectures by Leonard Bernstein? It builds up to the importance of Schoenberg and Stravinsky in Western classical music up to 1973. Of course, as Peter Schickele once said, "Stravinsky can take care of himself."
