Is infinite regress ultimately what destroyed Classical music in the United States and Europe? ?

Question

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infinite_regress

Starting with Beethoven, music regressed all the way to Giant Symphonies, Impressionism, Schoenberg, the 20th Century Folk-Classical movements in England and the US, and ultimately to a complete ueslessness of a Classical Music genre for the average man.

Answer 1

Malcolm asks 'when' classical music was ever intended for the average man.

Well, at least a precise date exists. The evening of December, 22, 1808.

That night, Viennese music lovers had a chance to choose between Haydn’s ‘The return of Tobias’ and a minor concert, where LvB presented simultaneously some of his last works. The majority went to Haydn’s, thus missing:

- parts of the C Major Mass

- Fourth piano concerto,

- Choral Fantasy for piano, choir and orchestra

- Fifth and

- Sixth Symphony.

Now, you don't put up a couple of such events if you are not targeting the average wienerisch.

Or the night when Verdi was dying in 1901 and all average milanese put straw on the road to mute the cart noise.

I am afraid you are simply right, but I am also afraid you'll have a hard life to survive in the Oversimplification Kingdom where you entered with your intriguing question.

The final outcome of experimentalism, as intended by the Darmstadt school from 50s on, especially by the most stringent guys like Messiaen and theorist Enzensberger, is the so-called 'elitarism'.

Xenakis, Cage and Varèse will never draw Vienna to their self-financed shows. Schoenberg used Mahler as a mentor, to organize expressionist concerts, and then stabbed him on his back (or at least his memory) with his twelvist Moses und Aaron.

I do like the way you read the history of music. Many deny that music proceeds through history. And someone will object to your theory because Vaughan-Williams (yesss) doesn't fit in there.

Good luck.

Answer 2

In response to Malcolm D's answer, I submit that, today, even the wealthy elite consider modern music useless.  The wealthy elite go to performances from symphonies; they insist that the symphonies perform "pleasant" 19th century music; therefore, in modern music, very few composers attempt to write new works for symphony.  So twentieth century classical music has even alienated both the average man and those who supported classical music all along.

I personally like modern music.  Give it a chance, I think you would like it too, the same way art connoisseurs have developed a taste for modern art.

Answer 3

I think it was more "eminent progress" than" infinite regress".

Answer 4

I don't know if I'd call it a 'regression', really. And I wouldn't put it on Beethoven...

I think it was Richard Wagner who was the first major composer to really show disdain for 'song' in his opera (though his operas do have songs... the man was something of a hypocrite). The Italian composers didn't follow him... except perhaps for Verdi in some of his later operas (like 'Falstaff').

If anything, it was Richard Strauss who pushed tonality to its limit with his Elektra and Salome... He stopped at the boundary and returned to melodic music with Der Rosenkavalier and other works. Alban Berg and Arnold Schoenberg then went across the border and invented the 12-tone serialism thing, and people like Stravinsky and others ran off with it.

Nowadays most (but not all. Listen to Glass or Heggie) of the modern composers seem to prioritize making their music as 'intellectual' as possible without much thought to whether most of the audience will be able to 'get it.' But I think the trend will have to return to melody people (non-musicologists) can understand soon. After all, people aren't exactly flocking to hear modern operas and oratorios and concerti as they do the earlier works with really communicative music in them (communication is, after all, a two-way street... when only the composer can appreciate his work, he's just talking to himself!).

So... if anything... classical music hadn't regressed. It just got over-developed, I think.

Answer 5

I blame radio, early recording methods that limited time to under five minutes, and advertisers who are locked into 30 and 60 second spots. No time for theme development and articulation; no nuances; no story to be told ... just get it out there in your face.

I hardly bame Beethoven. Expanding the orchestra did nothing to shorten the length of symphonies, concertos, or opera.

Answer 6

There is a fundamental flaw in such a premise... when was classical music ever intended for the average man? I would suggest that has never been the case.

Historically, the primary supporters of art music have been the wealthy elite or the educated cognscenti.

Radical "deconstructionism" of classical music did not really occur until the twentieth century with the advent of serial and atonal music.